Judith Samen

was born in Gladbeck, Westphalia, in 1970. After studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, she became a master student of Professor Fritz Schwegler in 1995. She has been a member of the German Artists’ Association since 2000. She held her first professorship in photography at the University of Siegen from 2005 onward and has been a professor at the Mainz Academy of Fine Arts since 2011. She lives in Düsseldorf and Mainz with her three children.

Her work encompasses photography, spatial installations, drawings, videos, and performance art. In the tradition of the Fluxus movement, the boundaries between art and everyday life become fluid. Thematically, her work navigates the tension between staging and the authenticity of human existence. Central themes include states of being such as old age, pregnancy, motherhood, and childhood. Physicality, food, and elements from art history and everyday life create resonant spaces in her work. In her search for unseen, moving visual creations, Samen crafts works that straddle poetry and drama. She combines vulnerability and humor, transience and deep bodily sensation, tragedy, and comedy. In the process, the seemingly familiar expands into the absurd. Her artistic strategy uses irritation to openly challenge viewers.