Anna Lange

The impactful and philosophical artworks of Anna Lange (Schaijk, 1967) guide you through a changing landscape: one where a road cuts the area in two, with all its consequences.

The Process

Anna Lange’s family history led her to create Sideway Scenery. The land once owned by her ancestors was radically transformed by the construction of a highway. The landscape was split in half: farms made way for a garbage dump and even a brightly lit brothel. In Sideway Scenery, Lange explores the clash between city and countryside, and the tension between tradition and commercial mass culture.

Lange’s work shows influences of various artists, including Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, and Andrei Tarkovsky. Rock star Lou Reed and novelist A.F.Th. van der Heijden even contributed to Sideway Scenery; their texts are incorporated into the installations.

The Artworks 

The unpredictability of the combinations and materials she uses creates a striking and suspenseful scene. Anna Lange works with neon, authentic family heirlooms, animals (roadkill), paintings, bronze sculptures, and fragments drawn from the world of the highway. In bronze, Lange recreates objects from consumer society—apple cores, cola cans, banana peels, and even a garbage bag. Once painted, the objects are almost indistinguishable from the real thing.

The Artist

Brabant-born Anna Lange studied at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam and the Royal Academy of Art and Design in ’s‑Hertogenbosch. She continued to live and work in that city, where her studio is still based. Lange keeps pushing boundaries and has exhibited both nationally and internationally.

In her own distinctive way, she infiltrated the Dutch army and introduced a peace corps: the Regiment Artemisten. This brought her regularly to the Royal Military Academy (KMA) in Breda. She later became Poetic Advisor at the Ministry of Culture in The Hague, where she delivered four advisory pieces through words, images, and gestures, using both radio and television.

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