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BIO

Tanja Hamester completed her studies in Fine Arts at the AdBK Munich with a Master in Art and Mediation and the 1st State Examination in Contemporary Arts and Arts Education. She also holds a M.A. in German Philology which she completed at the LMU Munich with a focus on medieval literature and iconography. In recent years, she has held teaching assignments in art history and gender studies at TUM and AdBK Munich. She received several grants and scholarships, among others the project funding scholarship of the Free State of Bavaria, the art scholarship of the district of Upper Bavaria, a DAAD scholarship in Rome, a DAAD post-graduate fellowship in Palermo and a travel grant of the Marschalk-von-Ostheim foundation Bamberg. She has exhibited in international solo and group shows at Spazju Kreattiv (ML), Voga Art Project Bari (IT), BIBART - Biennale Internazionale d´Arte di Bari (IT), Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa Palermo (IT), Gallery Garagezero Rome (IT), Museum Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau Munich (DE), Stadtgalerie Schwaz (AT), Burg Giebichenstein Halle (DE), Chisenhale Gallery London (GB), Galerie Kullukcu&Gregorian Munich (DE), Kunstverein Nördlingen (DE), Lothringer13 Munich (DE), Circuits&Currents Project Space Athens (GR), etc. As a member of several international artist collectives such as RoomToBloom (a feminist platform for ecological and postcolonial narratives about Europe) and LeBlocccate (art collective, research program, sports club) she is particularly interested in collective working and thinking processes.
 


ARTIST STATEMENT

As a contemporary feminist artist and researcher, I work research-based and engage with possibilities of an anachronic approach to history. The focus of my artistic work is on installation, video and performance art that draws on strategies from cartography and archiving. Material and medium develop from intensive philosophical and political research before and during my projects. Site-specific issues play a major role for me, so I often engage with public space and the settings that surround me. I understand my artistic practice in terms of an overlapping constellation and act in a transdisciplinary way. The uncovering, de- and reconstructing of power structures as well as the concept of (un)learning are important for my work. In my performative practice, I deal with the right of representation of my body as a performer. I strongly believe in the decentralisation of human activities and I am looking for interspecies alliances of peers where mutual learning, coexistence and carefully managed relationships take center stage, and can replace the constant search for surplus, excess and domination.