1979 born in Meiningen, Germany

2007
exchange studies, Bachelor of Art RMIT University, Melbourne, Australien
2003 – 2009
Studies of photo and design, Fachhochschule Dortmund under Prof. Susanne Brügger and Prof. Cindy Gates

Awards

2008
C/O Talents 2008, Winner
2007
Passion of Fashion, London Photographic Association, Highly Recommend

Solo exhibitions

2010
Galerie Voss, Düsseldorf
"Thirty-Two Kilos", Goethe Institut, Helsinki (FI)

2009
"Talents 10 / Zweiunddreißig Kilo", Goethe Institut, Washington, USA

2008
"Talents 10 / Zweiunddreißig Kilo", Postfuhramt Berlin

Group exhibitions

2013
"Boys 'N' Girls", Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe

2010
"Kritische Räume", Kulturzentrum Estaciòn Mapocho, Santiago de Chile (CL)
"6th International Festival of Visual Arts, Space Inspiracje, Szczecin (PL)

2009
"Darkside II", Fotomuseum Winterthur (CH)
"Talents 2008", Deutsche Börse Frankfurt
"Bildschön", Städtische Galerie Karlsruhe
"Indecent Exposure", Loop – Raum für aktuelle Kunst, Berlin

2008
Premio Internazionale Arte Laguna, Romanian Institute for Culture and Humanistic Research, Venedig (I)

2007
"EGO - Fotografische Positionen zum Ich", Wiesbadener Fototage, Thalhaus
Galerie, Wiesbaden
"on the move", Stuttgarter Fotosommer, Sympra, Stuttgart
London Photographic Association, Holborn Studios London, GB
"Rekonstruktion der Wahrheit", Darmstädter Tage der Fotografie,
Museum Künstlerkolonie, Darmstadt

2005
"Bewegte Bilder", Museum Alte Post Mühlheim

The pose is a balancing act in Ivonne Thein’s photographic series “Thirty-Two Kilos.” Here, she deals with the pathological striving of girls and women in the US to be extremely thin. The background to this work is a phenomenon that had already emerged in the US in the 1990s with the Internet movement “Pro Ana,” which elevates anorexia nervosa to the status of a new, positive lifestyle for young women. In Thein’s series, she simultaneously calls the role of photography into question: in the case of Pro Ana, this medium is, on the one hand, a document providing compelling evidence, but on the other, it is a consciously manipulated image. Photography takes on a key role in this process, creating and constituting extreme body images and ideals of femininity—with a direct link to the developments on the Internet. The phenomenon of the Pro-Ana websites is a product of our present day and age, in which individuality is being replaced by a totalitarian typology of images.
Ivonne Thein employs the tools, modes of presentation, and superficiality of the fashion world in her visual language and compositional style. Furthermore, she has manipulated her photographs on the computer, turning slender models into anorexic bodies. Faceless and positioned in disconcerting poses, they oscillate in a transitory state between femininity and morbidity. The female figure in the hermetic photographs of Ivonne Thein is constructed, artificial – a doll. It is as artificial as the image of ideal physicality that so fatefully ensnares most people with eating disorders. Only through the exaggeration does a complex confrontation with traditional images of the female body become possible. Beyond this, Thein confronts the viewer with the question of the status and role of photography in the digital age.
Text by Heide Häusler