Born 1947 in Zug, Switzerland. Lives in Richterswil and Amden, Switzerland.
Štrba’s everyday family life with the children Sonja, Samuel and Linda was the intimate, thematic subject of her early photographs. This happened “less out of conceptual consideration than out of inner necessity,” describes the text of the exhibition at the Kunsthalle Zürich, curated in 1990 by the then director Bernhard Mendes Bürgi. With this exhibition, Štrba’s series of photographs in the form of black-and-white photographic canvases were presented to the public for the first time. The simple, analogue photographs of that time, the personal situations and developments within the family, are then as now tangible and accessible to the viewer. We are close at hand, but never have the feeling of disturbing the intimate events. In 1997, Annelies Štrba compiled the photographs, which had been taken since 1970, in a triple slide projection entitled Shades of Time, and in the same year began to work with video. The resulting video stills are printed by Štrba on canvas, which specifically combines film and photography into one medium. The blurring of media boundaries becomes particularly clear in Štrba’s more recent works from 2002 onwards, because at this point she shifts from analogue to digital technology. Her interest here is in pixel structures, vibrant colors, and the digital processing obviously designed by the artist.
Štrba’s works are represented in international collections such as Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, Scotland; Schweizerisches Landesmuseum, Zurich, Switzerland; Hamburger Kunsthalle Sammlung, Germany; Fotomuseum, Winterthur, Switzerland; Kunsthaus, Zurich, Switzerland.
