German artist
Ulla von Brandenburg (born 1974 in Karlsruhe) is a German artist. She lives and works in Paris.
She shows her work internationally and is one of the four finalists nominated for the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2016.
Background.
Ulla von Brandenburg was trained in Germany at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design in scenography. She also studied visual arts at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg.
Artistic approach.
Ulla von Brandenburg's work is inspired by literature, theater and psychoanalysis. She is interested in the iconography of the XIX Century, in the history of technology and in the industrial revolution.
She uses a wide variety of media and techniques, including video, performance, theater, mural painting, drawing and fabric layouts. Ulla von Brandenburg declares that "I get the idea for a work at the same time as the appropriate format for that work".
If she favors black and white for her videos, it is in colour that her visual works are expressed. An architectural colour for her curtains, installations of fabrics, pictures of ribbons with shimmering fabrics or even coloured paper cut. A faded colour for her watercolors of ghostly characters.
Ulla von Brandenburg's works raise the matter of representation and it is through the style and language of theater and scenography that she builds many of her projects. The scenic elements, the curtains of the Commedia dell'arte, the costumes of Harlequin, and so on, are all references that allow her works to go from reality to fiction or illusion.  
Her installations unfold like decorations that are often perceived by inverting the setting and in which one enter through curtains. The curtain is a fundamental motif in her work, which she describes as follows: "As the mirror has two sides, the one that reflects us and the one that is hidden behind, the curtain has two sides too. At the circus you can fold it up in a very small size and unfold it to bring a marquee out of it. I like to camouflage or change the space with poor or very simple means to create an elsewhere. Fabric is the ideal medium, inexpensive, easy to transport, modular. It’s a nomadic material."
The other recurring motif of her work is the forest, that can be found in her videos (such as "Chorspiel") and her works in cut wallpaper. As with the curtain, this motif does not refer to a particular subject, but it refers "as much to Wagner and to Germany as to Tarkovski and to a common culture. Everywhere it corresponds to a universe, to tales, to the unconscious... ".
Her performances, in public or video, reveal the different facets of Ulla von Brandenburg's work: she writes the texts and the songs, she designs sets and costumes, chooses and directs the actors.
In February 2019, an exhibition at the Musée régional d'Art contemporain Occitanie, in Sérignan (Hérault), she presents her portraits of committed, learned and militant women.
References.
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