AUTOPIS: NOTES, COPIES AND MASTERPIECES, 2009, FOKSAL, Warsaw; 2010, MoMA, New York; 2019, Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel
The complexity of a lived historical reality inevitably gets simplified through representation. On this fulcrum, Ostoya’s art operates critically. She purposefully creates oppositional binaries from her source materials, manipulating history in order to show how malleable and complex (rather than predetermined and fixed) it is. This she achieves through artistic means, first by a process of selection and appropriation then augmentation, transposition, elision, and the countless other tools at her disposal. Ostoya tells us clearly that art is a site of discourse, perpetually in flux and responsive to its time.' Paulina Pobocha: Anna Ostoya: Case Study, Zachęta catalogue, 2018
'Anna Ostoya's mostly small, black-and-white collages and montages address certain social and political concerns with a directness that is refreshing amid so much obliquity. One of a pair of montages picturing a multitude of female artists is called The Tradition of Elasticity and Endurance. A companion piece portraying dozens of men is called The Tradition of Intensity and Force. The deadpan wit in that and in other works by Ms. Ostoya highlights by contrast the humorless solemnity of the rest of the show.' Ken Johnson, New York Times, 2013
Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel: Histories of Our Time, 13 Sep – 10 Nov 2019
Lajavardi Foundation, Teheran: We Rather Look Back to Futures Past, 2015
Museum of Modern Art, New York: New Photography, 2013
GAK, Bremen, Girls Can Tell, 28 Sep 2013 – 02 March 2014
Foksal Gallery, Autopis. Notes, Copies and Masterpieces, 8 Nov – 31 Dec 2010
Kunsthaus Baselland, 2019
MoMA, 2013
Lajavardi Foundation, Teheran, 2015
GAK, Girls Can Tell, 2014
Foksal Gallery, Warsaw