A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.(June 2024) |
Ursula Biemann (born 8 September 1955) is a Swiss video artist, curator, educator, and art theorist. [1]
Born on 8 September 1955 in Zurich, Switzerland. Biemann is a contemporary media artist. She was trained in art in Boston, Mexico and New York, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in 1986. In 1988 Biemann attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York. [2]
From 1995 to 1998 she curated the Shedhalle Zürich; and from 2000 to 2003, she taught at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Genève. [1] and directed artistic research projects (e.g. 2003-2005 B-Zone Becoming Europe and Beyond, 2005-2007 The Maghreb Connection) at the Institute for Theory at Zurich University of the Arts, ZHdK.
Biemann initiated several curatorial and collaborative research and exhibition projects (e.g. World of Matter produced by Hartware Dortmund, in the collection of HEK Basel) [3]
Biemann's early video art (e.g. 1999 Performing the Border and 2000's Writing Desire [4] ) addressed the topics of gender, globalization, technology and Mobility in an essayistic and documentary-like style. Her later work (e.g. 2013 Deep Weather, 2014 Forest Law, 2018 Acoustic Ocean, 2021 Forest Mind) [5] ) focuses on resources, the ecology, forests, and the climate, and uses a more critical style involving mythical, poetic and science fictional elements.
From 2018 to 2023 Biemann was commissioned new work by the Museo de Arte at the National University of Colombia UNAL, initiating a long-term collaboration with the Indigenous Inga people of Colombia creating an Indigenous University in the rainforest. The cooperation resulted in the media work Devenir Universidad [6] and Forest Mind with a focus on the intelligence in nature and a dialogue between scientific and ancestral knowledge systems.
The UNAL commission also comprised the creation of a multi-media an online monograph Becoming Earth of Biemann's ecological video works from 2012-2024. [7]
Biemann's work contributes to numerous group exhibitions worldwide and has been exhibited in International Art Biennials in 2024 Riyadh, 2023 Venice, 2008 and 2018 Shanghai, 2016 Sao Paulo, 2018 Taipei, 2016 Shardjah, 2008 Liverpool, 2008 Gwangju, 2009 Bamako, 2007 and 2022 Istanbul, 2014 Montreal.
Selected solo exhibitions
Biemann's writing addresses topics such as borders, migration, gender, the ecology, the Anthropocene, human-nonhuman relations and Indigenous knowledge systems, [1] including the ancient trans-Saharan trade routes that are now being used by migrants.
Books by the artist
Her works were first noted in the international media art scene before a first exhibition in Switzerland in 2009. Her works have been exhibited internationally since 1998, and are held by several Fonds d'art contemporain in France and Switzerland, as well as by the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges Pompidou in Rennes, Migros Museum, the Musée d'Art du Valais in Sion, Swiss Federal Art Collection BKS Bundeskunstsammlung, Kunsthaus Zurich, and the Generali Foundation in Vienna. She received the 2009 Prix Meret Oppenheim, a 2008 Honorary Degree by the Swedish University in Umeå, and the 2022 Art Award of the City of Zurich among other awards. [1]
Olaf Breuning is a Swiss-born artist, born in Schaffhausen, who lives in New York City.
Rita Ackermann is a Hungarian-born American artist recognized for her abstract paintings that incorporate human forms, primarily focusing on themes of anthropomorphism and femininity. Her works, often depicting women and allusions to fairy tales, explore the nuances of adolescent disinterest using a unique and expressive style of brushwork. She lives in New York City.
Georges Adéagbo is a Beninese sculptor known for his work with found objects.
JH Engström is a Swedish photographer, filmmaker and artist based in Paris.
Walid Raad (Ra'ad) (Arabic: وليد رعد) (born 1967 in Chbanieh, Lebanon) is a contemporary media artist. The Atlas Group is a fictional collective, the work of which is produced by Walid Raad. He lives and works in New York, where he is currently a distinguished visiting professor of photography at Bard College, in addition to being a professor of photography at the Cooper Union School of Art.
Rainer Fetting is a German painter and sculptor.
Karim Noureldin is a Swiss visual artist.
Amar Kanwar is an Indian filmmaker. His work challenges the limits of the medium in order to create complex narratives traversing several terrains such as labour and indigenous rights, gender, religious fundamentalism and ecology.
Umeå Arts Campus is the name of a former industry area that recently (2009–2012) was rebuilt to house several of the arts educations at Umeå University in Sweden. The arts campus will be an education center for architecture, design and artwork.
The Musée d'art moderne et d'art contemporain, also known as MAMAC, is a museum dedicated to modern art and contemporary art. It opened on 21 June 1990, in Nice, France.
Bildmuseet is a contemporary art museum in Umeå, northern Sweden.
Asta Gröting is a contemporary artist. She works in a variety of media like sculpture, performance, and video. In her work, Gröting “is conceptually and emotionally asking questions of the social body by taking something away from it and allowing this absence to do the talking.”
Julian Charrière is a French-Swiss conceptual artist currently living and working in Berlin. He uses several artistic approaches including photography, performance, sculpture, and video, to address concepts relating to time and human's relationship to the natural world.
Manfred Erjautz is an Austrian artist.
Raúl Cordero is a Cuban born conceptual painter. First known as part of the 90s generation in Cuba, when he started exhibiting his work mostly in Europe and the United States of America. Cordero represents through his work the "other Cuban art." Far from the standards of the Cuban Revolution art, and without falling into topics of other artists from in and out of the island, Cordero samples pretexts whimsically obtained from various referential origins and shows us his work as a result of recycling, of a revival, creating a new reality that refers more to art than to any other apparent content.
Larissa Sansour is a Palestinian artist who currently resides in London, England. Her practice includes photography, film, sculpture, and installation art. Some of her works include Tank (2003), Bethlehem Bandolero (2005), Happy Days (2006), Cairo Taxilogue (2008), The Novel of Novel and Novel (2009), Falafel Road (2010), Palestinauts (2010), Nation State (2012), In the Future, They Ate From the Finest Porcelain (2016), and Archaeology in Absentia (2016).
Cathérine Hug is a Swiss art historian and curator.
The Migros Museum of Contemporary Art is a museum for contemporary art in Zürich, Switzerland. Founded in 1996 by Gottlieb Duttweiler, the museum was directed by Rein Wolfs up until 2001, when he was replaced by Heike Munder.
RELAX is an artist collective founded by Marie-Antoinette Chiarenza and Daniel Hauser.
Ingrid Paula del Carmen Wildi-Merino is a Chilean-born Swiss video artist, curator, and educator. She has been a lecturer at the Geneva University of Art and Design, from 2005 to 2016. She has been active in Geneva, Biel, and Madrid; and she currently lives in Santiago.