Antje Schiffers is the new Artist in Residence Siegen fellow

For artist Antje Schiffers, the starting point for her work is not the studio, but rather courtyards, workshops, landscapes, and the people who live there. She develops her art through conversations and observations. With this approach, the Berlin-based artist is coming to the region as a new fellow of the Artist in Residence (AIR) Siegen program. In 2026 and 2027, she will carry out an artistic research project here in collaboration with scholars from the University of Siegen as well as stakeholders from the city and the region.

Antje Schiffers is one of Germany’s leading contemporary artists in the field of participatory and research-based art. Her work spans painting, film, archives, travel, conversation, and social practice. Her artistic research focuses on rural spaces, agriculture, labor, and the question of how social reality can be made visible through art. In doing so, she explores the relationships, stories, and conditions of production that underlie people, places, and materials.

“I am very pleased to welcome Antje Schiffers as an artist in the University of Siegen’s Artist-in-Residence program,” says Rector Prof. Dr. Stefanie Reese. “Her unique ability to engage with people and places, to observe closely, and to develop artistic perspectives from these encounters promises a collaboration that will greatly enrich our university and the region.”

In the third selection round for the University of Siegen’s program, conducted in cooperation with the Museum of Contemporary Art Siegen, the jury was impressed by the artists’ engagement with the city and the goals of “Artist in Residence Siegen.” The submitted proposals confirm the importance of—and the artists’ interest in—a vibrant exchange between academia, the arts, and the public.

According to Thomas Thiel, director of MGKSiegen, Antje Schiffers’ project proposal particularly impressed the jury. “For over 25 years, Antje Schiffers has consistently pursued an artistic approach centered on encounters and exchanges with people. Hospitality and shared celebrations play a special role in this.”

Schiffers does not view art as a finished work, but rather as a process of collaborative knowledge creation. Her projects often develop over long periods of time and are based on direct interaction with local people. Travel, observations, and conversations form the basis for paintings, films, installations, and archives. The participants not only become the subject of her work but are also actively involved in its creation.

Her residency at the Irlenhof near Kreuztal already offered a glimpse into this working method. There, Schiffers continued her long-term project “I Enjoy Being a Farmer and Would Like to Remain One.” She paints a picture of the farm while the farmers themselves shoot a film about their work and daily lives. The paintings remain on the farms, and the films become part of a growing archive of European agriculture. In this way, artistic perspectives on agriculture, labor, and regional identity are brought together. These are all themes that will also shape Antje Schiffers’ work as an AIR fellow.

In recent projects, Schiffers has focused on the global stories behind materials and production processes. Together with Thomas Sprenger, for example, she explored industrial raw materials, trade relations, and production sites in the exhibition

“Soda | Linsen | Fluff,” she examined industrial raw materials, trade relations, and production sites. She combined travel, drawings, conversations, and installations into a form of artistic field research that reveals economic and social interconnections.

With her dialogic approach, Antje Schiffers exemplifies an art that not only documents social realities but also explores them together with those involved and makes them tangible. Her projects combine aesthetic practice with methods reminiscent of ethnography, oral history, or social science field research. Insight emerges through encounter, collaboration, and joint production.

As part of her AIR fellowship, Antje Schiffers will develop a new artistic research project in the Siegen region. 

Wed., Nov. 11, 2026, 7–8 p.m.

Artist in Residence Siegen

“One Must Be Free” with Antje Schiffers

On Wednesday, November 11, 2026, the artist will present her work and her plans for the residency—under the working title “One Should Be Free”—for the first time in Siegen during a public lecture.

Location: FeinHier, Sandstraße 22, 57072 Siegen

Free admission

About the Artist

Antje Schiffers was born in Heiligendorf in 1967 and lives and works in Berlin. She uses artistic media as flexible tools for interaction and storytelling—for example, painting and drawing as objects of exchange, as mobile performative elements, or for stage-like productions. As an ambassador and correspondent, a working artist, and an expedition botanist, she immerses herself in different worlds and experiments with roles and methods. From 2003 to 2023, she was a founding member of the international women artists’ initiative Myvillages. Her work is exhibited internationally. https://antjeschiffers.de/

About Artist in Residence Siegen

The Artist in Residence Siegen (AIR) program was initiated by the University of Siegen in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Siegen. It fosters a long-term exchange between art, science, and the public and supports the development of the university town of Siegen through artistic perspectives. The selection process consists of two stages and is overseen by an international external advisory board and a local expert jury. Each member of the advisory board nominates one artist for the program. The nominees are invited to visit Siegen in person and are then asked to submit a proposal. The jury evaluates the proposals and selects one artist. The invited artists work in the region over an extended period and develop projects that address social issues and facilitate new forms of dialogue between the university, urban society, and culture. https://air.uni-siegen.de/

Members of the international external advisory board, listed in alphabetical order:

Ellen Blumenstein

Former curator of HafenCity and the “Imagine the City” pilot project in Hamburg

Prof. Dr. Joseph Imorde

Professor of Theory and History, Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin

Prof. Dr. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung

Artistic Director at the House of World Cultures (HKW), Berlin

Britta Peters

Artistic Director of Urbane Künste Ruhr, Bochum

Dr. Eva Schmidt

Curator and author, former director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Siegen

Joanna Warsza

Curator of visual arts in public spaces, City Curator in Hamburg

Axel Wieder

Director of the Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art

Members of the expert jury for the residency year, listed in alphabetical order:

Jennifer Cierlitza

Executive Director and Curator, Kunstverein Siegen e.V.

Prof. Dr. phil. habil. Eva von Engelberg

Professor of Architectural History, Department of Architecture, School of Education, Architecture and the Arts, University of Siegen

Prof. Stefan Wissel

Emeritus Professor of Art with a focus on sculpture at the University of Siegen

Dr. Karin Kolb

Director of the Siegerland Museum at the Upper Castle, Siegen