Ulla von Brandenburg

Born in 1974 in Karlsruhe in Germany, Ulla von Brandenburg lives and works in Paris. She first studied scenography in her hometown, before joining the Hamburg art school. 

The artist draws her inspiration from her initial training, from the sources of theater and dramaturgical conventions. Her works have a lot to do with what goes behind the scenes, the accessory, the disguise, always with an evocation by touches and allusions behind a decor.1 Which allows her to transgress the social order and to evoke a society through old images, masks, costumes from the popular tradition, but also to go in search of a new identity while subtly mixing reality and appearances in theatrical productions.2 

Ulla von Brandenburg is developing a polymorphic work (installations, films, watercolors, murals, cutouts, etc.), which the staging is developed according to the exhibition spaces. Perfectly mastering the codes of scenography, the artist always knows how to adapt her works according to contexts, creating dreamlike fictions, able to awaken specters. A follower of illusions and mysteries, the artist develops choreographic imagery. Playing with textures and patterns, drawing inspiration from German romanticism, reactivating the tradition of living paintings, the artist analyzes the current world through « end of the century » european references while taking part in a dazzling contemporaneity. 3 

Ulla von Brandenburg’s work has been shown in numerous major institutions: Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2008), Le Plateau, FRAC Île-de- France, Paris (2011), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012-2013), Secession, Vienne (2013), Kunstverein, Hannovre (2014), MAMCO, Genève (2015), Pérez Art Museum, Miami (2016), Centro Cultural Nestor Kirchner, Buenos Aires (2017), Musée des Beaux Arts de Rennes, Rennes (2017), Whitechapel Gallery, Londres (2018), MRAC, Sérignan (2019), Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans (2019), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2020). 

The artist’s works are included in the following collections: Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris ; Fisher Landau Center For Art, Long Island, New York ; Tate Modern, Londres ; The Israel Museum, Jérusalem ; Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin ; FRAC Piemonte, Turin ; FNAC, Paris La Défense ; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la Création, Paris ; FRAC Île-de-France, Paris ; FRAC Aquitaine Bordeaux ; FRAC, Pays de La Loire, Carquefou.