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Joana Bernd (1994) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Germany. Her artistic practice encompasses various mediums, including painting and video performances, aiming to create accessible art that resonates on a personal level. Bernd's work often reflects an intersectional feminist perspective, emphasizing the interconnectedness of emotional and ecological issues. In her paintings inner worlds are depicted like guidance from inside.
Her work has been exhibited in a solo show in Kopenhagen and in various group shows in European cities, such as Berlin, Barcelona, and London.
Artist Statement
The world feels like a divide - a crossroads of rupture and longing. My work opens windows into both paths: one shaped by feminist rage, despair, and the aching grief for our earth, for each other, and for all who are marginalized. The other path carries a soft resistance: tenderness, longing, and a quiet magic. Like harbingers from another realm, my objects, paintings and gestures appear - fragments of a world trying to mend.
I resist singularity. My practice spans performance, video, installation, and object-based work, guided by process and instinct. I travel through cinematic, symbolic forms - color and shape - and translate raw, fleeting moments into visual languages that speak plainly, yet hold deeper metaphorical weight. Whether I lie in a bed of stones (State of Woman), try to hold the moon close (Lasso and the Moon), or send lashes to strangers to make a wish upon, each gesture becomes a small offering, both personal and collective.
Symbols are essential to my work because they create bridges - connecting across differences and opening dialogue. I use text, the sounds of nature, and draw inspiration from spiritual and psychological practices, such as Jungian psychology. I also engage deeply with many interconnected “-isms” - feminism, anti-racism, environmentalism, and beyond. These are not separate ideas but parts of one whole, shaping how I see the world and my art. My feminism is intersectional, recognizing how these struggles overlap and intertwine. The conversations sparked - the shared recognition of rage and hope - are at the heart of my practice.
Two themes echo through my work: Don’t kill your tender heart and Il patriarcato è finito (Patriarchy is Over). They are portals inviting viewers to look again - softer, but also burning brighter.
What is rage? What is love? What is grief? What shape is hope?
These questions unfold in pieces like State of Woman and Cocoon, always rooted in natural environments. I want my harbingers - magical objects, mobiles, garments, flags, tents - to be grounded in our world. That is why I perform outdoors, often using natural materials like bamboo sticks, stones, sand, and mud, weaving the magical with the earthly.
We move through the world believing our stories are alone. Yet longing, loss, hope, grief, and love are shared patterns, universal and chemical.