Sanna Helena Berger works with site- and situation-specific installations, situation aesthetic and post-institutional critique; New Theory. Her installations consist of readymades and unreadymades, through which Berger analyses the formalism of a distinct and present art object. 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. Her theory of the unreadymade, applied in practice, grants agency to mundane matters to act extravagantly and against their intended raison d’être as banality. Her extensive writing allows one to understand the exhibition as its 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 as method and topic, set in a non-form; an undisciplined structure oscillating in and out of philosophy and theory but always leaving the personal unpolished opposing a formal finish.
‘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 experiences 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, curator / writer, Mousse Magazine
Solo Exhibitions
2025
Metod, Antics, Stockholm
Absolut, Shahin Zarinbal, Berlin
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
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
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