sanna@sannahelenaberger.com

Sanna Helena Berger works with site- and situation-specific installations, situation aesthetics and post-institutional critique. Her installations consist of readymades and unreadymades - found and made sculptural objects which analyse the formalism of a distinct and present ‘art object’. Her auto-didactic position manifests as a reflexive discipline, where Berger employs strategies that invite reflection on how we assign originality, meaning and capital within the arts. A theory of the unreadymade materialised in practice grants agency to mundane matters to act extravagantly. Berger’s work is informed by her extensive writing in which we understand the exhibition as its synthesis. Monologues are performed and read as either a coupling discourse to her work or an autonomous ‘composition’ in which Berger melange humour with theory, with language as topic, allowing an undisciplined structure opposing a finish. Aesthetics, albeit acutely present, is never the raison d'etre of the work but a vernacular of its meaning.

‘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 destabilises 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, Kunstkritikk

Berger’s work is an aesthetic and intellectual structure driven by autodidacticism and material pragmatism. Often beginning as a text, her installations variate quotidian experience reformulating power relationships and ideas of value through situations and objects. While Sanna may not refer to herself as a director, I find it helpful to think about the diversity of her practice as a directorial strategy, particularly in her management and orchestration of meaning and form.
- Alexandra Symons Sutcliffe, Independent curator / writer, Mousse Magazine

2024
Post-Mother-ism, Texte zur Kunst, Berlin (reading)
Aktuelles Denken, amatter, Berlin (Reading)
Die Waffen der Frauen, Weißensee Kunsthochschule, Berlin (Lecture)
BOURSE, Centralbanken, Oslo, Norway *solo
Die installierte Reale with Cecilie Norgaard, Rinde am Rhein, Düsseldorf, Germany
Post-Dekadens, 3e våningen, Gothenborg, Sweden *solo
Nicht-nur-Spekulativ, Philipp Zollinger, Zürich, Switzerland *solo
New German Critique (or better ideas), Stadt&Land, Cittipunkt, Berlin (reading)
Skulptur Projekte, Kaiserwache, Freiburg *solo
A farewell to identity / Who critiques the critic's critics?, Shahin Zarinbal, Berlin (reading)

2023
Ohne, Ohne titel, Philipp Zollinger, Zürich
Mute Point, Shahin Zarinbal, Berlin
Unruly Analysis, Jennifee-See Alternate, Den Frie, Copenhagen
Post-mother-ism, amatter, Berlin
Postural Fatigue, Baerum Kunsthall, Oslo
Rational Display, Galerija Miroslav Kraljević, Zagreb *solo
Role (Play), Močvara Gallery, Zagreb *solo
CONCRETE ARGUMENTS, Shahin Zarinbal, Berlin *solo
Represäntation, Waf Galerie, Vienna
Minor Variations, Skånes Konstförening, Malmö

2022
Der Ganz Normale Luxus der Zunge, Kunsthalle Bremerhaven
XS, Spazio ORR, Brescia, Italy *solo
Ego & Orchestra, Hosêk Contemporary, Berlin *solo
A text about failure, amatter, Cittipunkt, Berlin
Der Ganz Normale Luxus, Neu Workshop, Hamburg
A text about failure, Höjden, Stockholm

2021
Persona Sonata, Lament.tv, Berlin *solo
Im dialog, w. Aline Sophie Rainer, Kunstverein Kärnten, Austria


2020
Parallels, Cell Project Space, London

2019
An ode to labour, 1.1 Basel, Switzerland
Oyster, PiK – Projektraum im Kunstwerk, Cologne
Nome d'us, Shore, Vienna
SALE, PS120, Berlin *solo

2018
A stock-take, Super, Berlin *solo
A smile-strike, Index, The Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm
Intermission, Delfi, Malmö
A sale, Brussels Art Weekend, Super, Brussels *solo

2017 (selection)
Vienna, Cordova, Vienna *solo
Vienna,Cordova, Barcelona *solo
Maybe there is a substitute for exhibiting, Minibar, Stockholm
Arbetstitel (offentligt verk), Delfi, Malmö *solo

2016 (selection)
Agency (properties of pseudo-public spaces as a prelude), Sorbus, Helsinki *solo
Agency, Kulturforum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, November
A sequence which corresponds, Union Gallery, London *solo
The edge must be scalloped, Diorama, Oslo *solo
Domestic Manifesto, Modern Museum, Stockholm
The body as function, Shanaynay, Paris

Selected Texts / Published works
Unruly Analysis, Jennifee-See Alternate catalogue, Copenhagen 2024
Success Media, Cecilie Norgaard exhibition text, Shahin Zarinbal, Berlin 2024
Carfume, Thorben Gröberl exhibtion text, Maniera Brussels, Berlin 2023
WHEELS, Cecilie Norgaard exhibtion text, PCP Galerie, Paris, 2023
Concrete Arguments, Verlag Ida Neustadt Co-published with Shahin Zarinbal, Catalogue, 2023
Feuilles Volantes by vorstellen.network at Sculpture Garden Biennale, Geneva, 2022
Der ganz normale luxus, Zirka, Hamburg / Yvonne Lambert, Paris, 2022
DEARS magazine, w Axelle Stiefel, Zürich, 2021
Artist Network Theory Supported by Swiss Art Prize, 2020
Eva Hesse Foundation publication, NY, 2018
Domestic Manifesto, Las Injurias, Caracas, Venezuela, 2016, Printed Matter, NY

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