Anja Balle Capener is an interdisciplinary artist and designer living in Chicago, IL.  Anja’s work explores digital and physical transformation through the layering of materials with found objects and photographs, digital manipulation, and object-making. Their work is inspired by the relationship between the fleeting natural world and its human counterpart. Through image and object-making, Anja is drawn to landscapes where objects or architecture unveil human interaction and natural materials, namely botanicals, wool, wood, and stone.

For Anja, photography is a method to discover ways that the image can lead to a physical object, as well as being an object itself. Their process involves a curious, tactile approach, reminiscent of ethnographic research, as they discover raw material in both craft and design.  Their work as a floral designer at an Urban Farm has informed their relationships with botanicals in domestic and public space. Asking the question, what could be considered a garden, and what do you find there?

In 2023, Anja co-founded Inbound Collaborative Studio. Inbound Collaborative Studio facilitates skill-share initiatives to support Chicago-based artists through community learning and engagement. Inbound currently facilitates a community-driven program that pairs artists based on skill-sharing interests. Over the course of ten weeks, pairs create a project that is showcased as a cohort in a public show.