Anna de Vriend (1996, the Hague) is a visual artist based in Arnhem, the Netherlands.

When I was eight years old, I lost my grandmother and one of my sheep in the same week, I mourned them equally. I grew up and cared too much; now I get panic attacks in the meat and dairy aisle.
Becky taught me to care, Marrie taught me that the care I give has to come with respect for autonomy.
I became a leaky container of grief for the calves in the slaughterhouse.
One of their unwillingly removed skins was imperfect, I brought it home with me and felt the weight of responsibility for the narrative it encompassed.
Örvi carried me until I figured it out.
When the hunters accused me of irrational sentimentalism, it was the boar who showed me the necessary magic of life and death in the forest. There is more to life than feigned logical rationality and a man’s anger.
I remembered Bokito’s resistance and saw the pictures of him in a restaurant; revealing the significance of stepping over a boundary and declaring yourself subject not object.

As an artist, the stories of other animals have been fundamental in imagining different worlds. I see my practice as a collaboration between their non-human knowledge and my research and storytelling abilities.
By investigating the tactics used in spaces operating on the exploitation of non-human bodies I aim to get a grasp on how capitalist and patriarchal systems work. Challenging these structures requires understanding them and how they've been internalized; moving beyond them requires non-human knowledge and imagination.

Together with artists Anne Schoemaker, Kai and Harriet Caldwell I am part of the collective HIBERNATION. We aim to create space for ourselves and other artists to re-evaluate what they have been taught about artisthood and succes. Take a look at our website here.