I am a Swiss artist based in London with an MFA from Central Saint Martins.
My practice is multidisciplinary and I use found materials, choreography/movement, drawing, film, language and sound to create ‘sculptural plays’.
I am interested in disparate media, processes and situations and in bringing people and things together in theatrical, often absurd scenarios intended to scramble reality. I create temporary, alternative realities through collaboration, improvisation and play.
I am concerned with process rather than producing stable, aesthetic objects and the making is at the core of each work. My approach is often task-based and I use game structures and chance to navigate and explore materials, places and situations.
There often is a haphazardness about what I do and I like to embrace mistakes and finding new ways of making through limitations. I want to do what I don’t know how to do.
(unconscious) Cognitive activity is the content of the work and I delight in an aesthetic of concurrence.
Parallel to my practice I have extended these ideas into my project HOUSERULES (2014 to 2017) – a platform for spontaneous artistic experimentation in a nomadic state. HOUSERULES embraced indeterminacy; bringing but also questioning, freedom, action and play within the context of a given space. HOUSERULES invited artists from various disciplines to contribute to a location or space culminating into a performative exhibition focusing on process. The individual works that were developed in these locations took on a variety of media including dance/movement, film, installation, sculpture, written/spoken word and sound, all coming together to form a temporary situation of creative energy and surprise.
My activities with HOUSERULES have evolved into käfig. I wanted to put the elements of HOUSERULES into a more focused space to develop. Apart from being a strange word to pronounce in English and making reference to John Cage, whose own working process greatly influence my practice, ‘Käfig’ also means cage in German. This, metaphorically, acts as the focused space to develop in and at the same time to be broken out of. These focused developments become unscripted sculptural plays that evolve using chance methods and material improvisations. They are composed and produced live on 'stage' without any pre-existing narrative.
‘Freedom is a state of mind - not freedom from something, but a sense of freedom, a freedom to doubt and question everything and therefore so intense, active and vigorous that it throws away every form of dependence, slavery, conformity and acceptance.’ J. Krishnamurti
Influences on käfig performances as well as my general practice are Antonin Artaud and John Cage among others.
Key interests: Collaboration, improvisation, play, indeterminacy, the theatrical, the cross-disciplinary, interpretation, the artistic process, out of the box/alternative and progressive arts education.
contact: nadiaberri2021@gmail.com
Selected Exhibitions and Projects:
2020
käfig for Co.Lab Sound curated by Marley Treolar for Fringe Arts Bath
2019
käfig for Testbed: Collaborate/kəˈlabəreɪt, Camden Arts Centre
2018
käfig, 19a Herald Street, London
käfig populating Jose Damasceno’s exhibition ‘Republica’, Thomas Dane Gallery, London
käfig, Deptford does Art, London
2017
HOUSERULES Under the E Cross Rte., under the E Cross Rte., London May 2017
HOUSERULES Hage, Rabih Hage Architect, Furniture Warehouse, London January 2017
2016
‘HOUSERULES Summer School’, July 2016, London
2015
‘HOUSERULES Folly’, Queen Caroline’s Temple Kensington Gardens, London
‘The Guided Tour’ HOUSERULES for Artlicks Weekend, London
de beauvoir residencies, hosted by HOUSERULES, London
2014
UNLOCKING THE DIARY curated by Eiko Honda, Folkestone
Fringe at The Grand, Folkestone, 30 August to 2 November, Folkestone
‘HOUSERULES’, 13 artists occupying the 20,000 sqf fifth floor of a deserted office building in East India Dock, London
2013
LUPA (20) FETE – last LUPA EVENT, London
LUPA15, 25 January 2013, LOCK UP PERFORMANCE ART - A
performance series curated by Aaron Williamson, Jordan McKenzie, Kate Mahony and Rachel Dowle 2011 – 2013, London
2012 51°29′35′′N 0°05′46′′W – Two Art Projects on Heygate and Pullen Estate, Elefest, London
SE1 Open Show, Bow Arts SE1 Project Space, Bermondsey, London
Repeat, Rewind, Rephrase, Latymer Projects, London
contact: nadiaberri2021@gmail.com