BERLIN.- On view at Fotografiska Berlin from March 13 to June 12, the exhibition weaves together platform economies and the lived realities of the biographies entangled within them, forming a shared narrative. The project was developed in close collaboration with researcher Ariana Dongus as well as activists and worker-researchers Richard Mathenge, Mophat Okinyi, and Fasica Berhane – all of whom have worked as digital platform laborers themselves and connected Ehrenstein with further workers and stakeholders on the ground.
Set within a hybrid mythological landscape, the multisensory exhibition renders tangible the interplay of (post-)colonial continuities, global economies, and the invisible labor that underpins algorithms. At its core are the individuals in Nairobi who train large language models, and copywriters in Cairo producing content for OnlyFans.
“My work understands artistic research as collective knowledge production. In The Language of the Soil, the focus is not on individual insight or ‘artificial’ intelligence, but on shared intelligence – on knowledge that forms between people, technologies, and stories, like light reaching many eyes.” – Anna Ehrenstein
In Ehrenstein’s practice, soil represents both origin and trace – the often invisible residues of labor. It embodies the material foundations upon which digital economies are built, while also pointing to the persistence of historical hierarchies and exploitative structures that continue to shape today’s global labor and data economies. The ground becomes a symbol of the entanglement of human, nature, and technology – a starting point for artistic reflection and collective fiction.
Drawing on postcolonial theory, digital labor studies, speculative design, and nature writing, the artist worked alongside scholars to organize interviews, workshops, and collective storytelling events with platform workers. Together, they developed a narrative in which artistic research and collaborative authorship are conceived as inseparable.
At the center of the exhibition, a 40-minute 360° video condenses excerpts from interviews and workshops, photographic material from Nairobi and Cairo, and elements of science fiction into a layered narrative experience.
The result is a body of work that is both poetic and political – a cycle of creation that continues in hand-painted 3D-printed sculptures and scenographic installations.
Visitors are invited to trace the conditions of this form of digital labor, to recognize the marks of human work embedded within technological systems, and to reflect on their own position within these structures. At the same time, The Language of the Soil raises urgent questions about solidarity, agency, and resistance in an increasingly automated world.
Anna Ehrenstein (*1993) is a transdisciplinary artist whose work engages research, teaching, and collaborative formats. Her practice spans assemblage, lens-based media, installation, social interaction, and text. She studied media art, photography, and curatorial practice, and since 2024 has served as Professor of Photography at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig (Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig). She has previously taught at Bard College, the Technical University of Berlin, the Berlin University of the Arts, the Stellenbosch Academy in South Africa, and Photopia Cairo in Egypt.
Ehrenstein’s work examines material cultures of the periphery, networked images, and digital ecologies within conditions of global entanglement and prosumption. She has exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at the Musée d’art de Joliette (Canada) and the Goethe-Institut New York, as well as presentations at the Lagos Biennial and the Ural Biennial. Her works are held in public and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Federal Art Collection of Germany (Bundeskunstsammlung), and Fotomuseum Winterthur. In 2020, she received the C/O Berlin Talent Award and has been nominated, among others, for the Prix Pictet.
