Info

Sanna Helena Berger (b. Sweden, lives and works in London and Berlin) works predominately with relational and/or site-specific installation, text and performance. Berger’s works are often participatory, relying on the audience and their social labor as a vital component in her installations. These range from domestic environments to sculptural settings that include minimal performative elements. Berger accentuates our attention to situations which allows the interpretative discourse to linger post-appreciation with the viewer, rather than as a singular truth presented as artworks. The space in which we view and experience art is essential to Berger’s method of commentary, often as a critique of the pseudo-institutional gallery space posing as public space.
When working with performance Berger utilise the actor as a presence strengthening the commentary of the situation. This presence is not always made clear as a performative element allowing the viewer the option to question and interpret this role.

‘Sanna Helena Berger creates situations that provoke and intensifies the alternation between scrutinising and coming under scrutiny that signifies our interaction with art. Berger effectively destabilise flows of real social interaction in a series of explorations into how behaviour is conditioned by our surroundings, and how in turn these mechanisms can be deployed for artistic purposes. Berger’s interventions enlarge and skew the familiar into subtly caricatured forms, inviting detachment. Yet, despite their stagedness, these performances and arrangements also bleed out into the space they occupy together with their audience, making participation compulsory.’

– Stian Gabrielsen, Editor-in-Chief Kunstkritikk

Solo Shows 2016
Agency (properties of pseudo-public spaces as a prelude), Sorbus Gallery, Helsinki, Finland, October 2016
A sequence which corresponds, Union Gallery, London, 13 May – 25 June 2016
The edge must be scalloped, Diorama, Oslo, Norway, 1 April – 29 April 2016
A reference to monumentality, Garage Sanremo, Milano, Italy, 12 April 2016
Lease of Poem “Number 4”, Vantaa Airport, Finland, 26 April 2016

Selected Solo Shows 2014 / 2015
A range, Jupiter Woods, London, October 2015
The foundation is a body, All Welcome, Vilnius, Lithuania, September, 2015
A close-knit symphonic texture, berger gray, London, October 2014

Selected Group Shows / Collaborative Works
EVA Berlin, Kulturforum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 9 – 11 November, 2016
Domestic Manifesto, Modern Museum, Stockholm, October, 2016
Resident / Longshore Drift, Sorbus, Helsinki, Finland April 2016
She hated Haiku, Poppy’s gallery, Sacramento, USA, April 2016
The body as function, Shanaynay, Paris, France, February 2016
A-formal (wet suit), HFBK, Academy of Fine Arts, Hamburg, December 2015
A principal division of a larger movement II w. Hanna Nilsson, Frankfurt Am Main, Berlin, October 2014

Published works
Domestic Manifesto Published by Las Injurias, Caracas, Venezuela, 2016
Agency, EVA Berlin Konferenzband, Kulturforum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2016

Residencies by invitation
Sorbus Galleria, Helsingfors, Finland, October, 2016
Union Gallery, London, U.K, April / May, 2016
Jupiter Woods, London, U.K, October 2015
Rupert, Vilnius, Lithuania, September 2015
Residencia El Roquissar, Valldemossa, Majorca, Nov – Feb 2014/15

Workshops
The body is a foundation, Malmö Academy of Arts, April, 2016
The body is a foundation, Rupert, Vilnius, Lithuania, September, 2015