Sanna Helena Berger works with site- and situation-specific installations, situation aesthetic and post-institutional critique. Her installations consist of readymades and unreadymades, through which Berger analyses the formalism of a distinct and present art object and its coupled consumption. Her auto-didactic position manifests as a reflexive discipline where Berger employs strategies to invite reflection on how we assign originality, meaning and capital within the arts, utilising white as metaphor for the institutional. A developing theory of the unreadymade, applied in practice, grants agency to mundane matters to act extravagantly and against their intended raison d’être as banal commodities. Plural legibility allows her aesthetically astute works to play on the superficiality of materials, whilst her extensive writing allows one to understand the exhibition as a synthesis, where theory and aesthetic land on par. Monologues are performed and read either as a coupling discourse to her work or an autonomous ‘composition’ in which Berger melange humour with theory, with language both as method and as topic, set in a non-disciplinary form oscillating in and out of philosophy and theory, and the empirical and observed, leaving her self unpolished, openly inadequate, opposing a final finish.
Solo Exhibitions
2025
Absolut, Shahin Zarinbal, Berlin
Metod, Antics, Stockholm
Opera, Cabinet Milano, Milano
2024
Bourse, Diorama, Oslo
Nicht-nur-Spekulativ, PHILIPPZOLLINGER, Zürich
Skulptur Projekte, Kaiserwache, Freiburg
Post-dekadens, 3e Våningen, Göteborg
2023
Rational Display, Galerija Miroslav Kraljevic, Zagreb
Concrete Arguments, Shahin Zarinbal, Berlin
2022
XS, Spazio ORR, Brescia, Italy
2020
Parallels, Cell Project Space, London
2019
SALE, PS120, Berlin
2018
A stock-take, Super, Berlin
Index, The Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm
A sale, Brussels Art Weekend, Super
2017
Vienna, Cordova, Vienna
Vienna, Cordova, Barcelona
Arbetstitel (offentligt verk), Delfi, Malmö
2016
Agency (properties of pseudo-public spaces as a prelude), Sorbus, Helsinki
Agency, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, November
A sequence which corresponds, Union Gallery, London
The edge must be scalloped, Diorama, Oslo
Performances / Readings
2025
Schmutztitel, Kunsthalle Wien, Wien
Ex Libris Redux, Texte Zum Nachdenken, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster
All ears, Haubrock Foundation, Berlin
Neostalgia, Oxford, Berlin, Berlin
5-7 minutes, Adults Entertained, Berlin
New German Critique, Skånes Konstförening
Konzentration auf die Inhalte, Hansa Bibliothek, Berlin
It is good fishing in troubled waters, Obelus, Berlin
2024
Post-mother-ism, Texte Zur Kunst, Berlin
Aktuelles Denken, amatter, Berlin
Who’ll critique the critic’s critic?, Shahin Zarinbal, Berlin
New German Critique, Cittipunkt, Berlin
Die Waffen der Frauen, Lecture, Weißensee Kunsthochschule, Berlin
2023
Role (play) Mocvara Gallery, Zagreb
Unruly Analysis, Jennifee See Alternate, Den Frie, Köpenhamn
Post-mother-ism, amatter, Gesundbrunnen, Berlin
2022
Der Ganz Normale Luxus der Zunge, Kunsthalle Bremerhaven
Group / Duo Exhibitions (selection)
2025
Untitled participation, Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel
Schmutztitel, Kunsthalle Wien, Wien
Towards the centre of the field, SIMIAN, Copenhagen
Metod, Halle für Kunst, Lüneburg, DE
A movement, Tibberödsbiennalen, Tibberöd, Sweden
Stillleben, European Renovation, Stockholm
2024
Die installierte Reale, with Cecilie Norgaard, Rinde am Rhein, Düsseldorf
2023
Ohne Ohne Titel, Philipp Zollinger, Zürich
Mute Point, Shahin Zarinbal, Berlin
Postural Fatigue, Baerum Konsthall, Baerum
Represäntation, Waf Galerie, Vienna
Minor Variations, Skånes Konstförening, Malmö
2021
Im dialog, Kunstverein Kärnten, Austria
Selected Published works
New German Critique, ABHIVYAKTI Magazine
Opera, Cabinet Milano, Milano
Postponed, self-published, Berlin
Neostalgia, Hassla Books, New York
3 text compendium, Tausend Editionen
Nicht-nur-Spekulativ, Catalogue, philippzollinger, Zürich
Feuilles Volantes by vorstellen.network at Sculpture Garden Biennale, Geneva
Der ganz normale luxus, Zirka, Hamburg / Yvonne Lambert, Paris
Artist Network Theory Supported by Swiss Art Prize
Eva Hesse Foundation publication, NY
Domestic Manifesto, Las Injurias, Caracas, Venezuela, Printed Matter
Berger is the co-founder of performance programme ‘amatter’ and have been teaching at Kunsthochschule Weisensee, Berlin