Ines Schabers’ work revolves around questions of visibility. There, it is a matter of the back side of things (being) made visible; questioned in her work is specifically the status of the things that remain hidden, or are kept invisible. Central within this field of questions, is the role of photography. In her installative arrangements, she provokes a gaze and produces a sight, which constantly insist and questions the presence of things absent. Her work interrogates in what way photography, which is an artistic medium as well as a popular medium and a medium of the mass media, defines, fixates, or stashes away things and contents.

Since 2005 Ines Schaber works on the project the working archive. In a series of case studies, texts, and artistic works she investigates and tests notions of the archive, in which not the collecting and sorting of things, but the work and production done around archives is at stake. Could one say with Okwui Enwezor, that we are in an archive fever? Does he mean that we deal with documents of the past feverishly? Does he suggest that our contemporary culture orients itself mainly towards the past and therefore sets itself in a state of fever? Is the work with and around the archive something that is directed towards the past, or aren’t on the other hand specifically the dealings with archives that try to activate or make the documents productive, that set ourselves in a mode of fever?