Astrid Busch – World in Minds

The publication by Astrid Busch World in Minds is an artistic approach to the ports of Hamburg, Antwerp in Belgium, Le Havre in France, and Istanbul in Turkey. The history and present of the four ports, as well as the frequency of the ships arriving and departing, are the basis of the project’s content and complement each other in their interaction. What does a port mean for a city and how has the development of the ports proceeded. Ships used to sail directly into cities, the harbour was part of the city. Nowadays, access to the port is strictly controlled and only open to authorized personnel. Past, present, and future of the four ports and the tanker traffic are brought together creating stories about the ports, other worlds, ideas, and exchange. The images she brings back from her travels are incorporated into a process of ongoing metamorphosis, resulting in new kinds of transition and expansion. In combination with the documentary images of the harbo, they act like “strange counter images” that stimulate associative thinking.
The art historian Wolfgang Ullrich writes about the project: „By offering images to her audience that do not immediately reveal what they depict or how they came into being, thereby giving rise to speculation, she seeks to awaken curiosity. And when she brings together images of different character in the same space, hanging or projecting them partially over one another, she encourages active associating and thinking ahead. She even entices viewers to come up with their own interpretations of the presented image processes. Those who do not have the opportunity to travel to unknown or hard-to-reach places should not be satisfied with just a few images from there but should be given the promise that something new can always emerge anywhere. The title World in Minds makes it abundantly clear: There is so much to discover when one looks inward as well as outward and relies on one’s own imagination.“
Astrid Busch’s works encompass installations, photographs, paper works, objects, and moving images. Her works are often based on architectural designs or places that she investigates for their sensual perceptibility and their impact on the human being. Her motifs refer to found and self-created images that are transformed and altered in dimensions and then translated onto various image carriers in the space under complex lighting conditions. Astrid Busch studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg and the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin, where she graduated as a master student of Prof. Katharina Grosse. She lives in Berlin and Düsseldorf.
Her works have been shown in national and international exhibitions. Astrid Busch has received numerous scholarships and awards, including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, New York City, USA (2021), a cultural exchange stipend for Istanbul of the federal state of Berlin (2021), a cultural exchange stipend for Brasilia of the Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Berlin (2020), a project scholarship from the Kunststiftung NRW (2019), scholarships from the Association Fort! In Le Havre, France (2018) and the Künstlerdorf Schöppingen Foundation (2017), a work scholarship from the Stiftung Kunstfonds, Bonn (2016), a residency scholarship from Kunstdepot Göschenen, Switzerland (2020), from Museum Kunst der Westküste, Föhr, Germany (2021), and from La Forme Lieu d‘exposition Art Contemporain Architecture in Le Havre, France (2016), and a scholarship from the Künstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral in Bad Ems (2013).