Ulla von Brandenburg

Ulla von Brandenburg lives and works in Nogent-l’Artaud, France, and in Karlsruhe, Germany. She is one of the most influential and recognised artists of her generation, having had important solo shows at Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Secession (Vienna), Kunstverein Hannover, The Power Plant (Toronto), Kunsthal Arhus, Musée Jenisch (Vevey), Whitechapel Gallery (London) and Kunstmuseum Bonn. Her work has also featured in many group shows, including at the Venice Biennial, the Sydney Biennial and Triennial, and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. In 2023 she presented a solo show at Palacio de Cristal Reina Sofia in Madrid, and in 2024-2025 at the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach. Her work has been acquired for public collections, including Tate Modern (London), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Hamburger Kunsthalle, Stuttgarter Staatsgalerie, Israel Museum (Jerusalem), GAM (Turin) and Mudam (Luxembourg).

Ulla von Brandenburg develops a complex and multifaceted practice which she implements through diverse media – installation, film, watercolour, wall painting, collage and performance -, interweaving them and staging her work in accordance with the exhibition space. Versed in the tropes of theatre and stage, informed by literature, the history of art and architecture, but also psychoanalysis, magic and occultism, she borrows just as easily from esoteric rituals and popular ceremonies as from the mechanisms of the theatre to explore the structures of our societies. Taking masks, costumes, scenery and props from popular traditions, she symbolically transgresses norms and hierarchies in theatrical stagings which subtly combine reality with appearances.

For her residency at Villa Kujoyama, Ulla von Brandenburg immerses herself in the life of objects to reconsider how she inhabits the world. She does this by documenting the forms and private life of objects in Kyoto, capturing the shadows they cast as an extension of their being. She then plans to incorporate these motifs into a textile project, such as yuzen or boro.