CV

27.08.-23.09.2021 Into Reverie. Solo show at the gallery kulturreich in collaboration with the foundation KunstLeben e.V., Hamburg

2022

08.02.-15.02.2022 Transition. Virtual group exhibition of The Holy Art Gallery London

31.03.-14.04.2022 Spring Art Show. Group exhibition at the Art Nou Millenni Gallery Barcelona

09.05.2022 20*20 Projekt Mainz. Benefit auction in Mainz

2023

26.-29.01.2023 Group Show CLIMATE ART! - Art in the context of the Anthropocene, environmentalism & the climate crisis

Artist statement, 2022

There is a feeling deep down that leads us, and there are ghosts that awaken within ourselves, as we watch a landscape of divine beauty. It is transformation that lies between life and death, and that I explore in my paintings. It's the power and the fragile. It is a feeling of separation and connection, calmness and belonging - reminiscent of what is indisputable: everything lives, and everything dies. The cycles of nature know no grief and no happiness. They show that nothing is infinite. Nothing, but change.

Joana Bernd lives and works in Hamburg and Cologne. Born and raised in the countryside, she has always felt a strong interest in nature and its constant cycles. As she has grown from child to woman, she has learned to understand these phases of change in another way. She has come to understand that one dies more than one death during a lifetime. Like the trees that die once a year, humans also shed their skin once in a while, moving forward with a new skin, gradually growing into something new and different, marked with the scars and insights of the experiences they have had before.

In her paintings she explores the stage of transformation that marks the end of something and the longing for the new beginning that has not yet taken place.nEach of her paintings tells a story of change of its own, attempting less to depict the events than the spirit of the narrative. Varying in mood, the works tell stories of farewell, grief, and nostalgia or of forgiveness, celebration and victory. Sometimes figures appear, sometimes we see spaceless landscapes. While differing in at first sight, each image tries to capture a return to a place of endless possibility that precedes transformation; the transformative stage that holds the capacity for people to grow into something beyond themselves. Only if we dare go there, will we learn something beyond the ordinary. This place lies in all of us, and the paintings want to guide you there.

The motif of transformation is reflected in the choice of materials and the way they are applied and allowed to live. Through the use of liquid colors, the colors themselves experience a transformation as they spread across the glazed paper base. Because the colors can spread in such a way, there is room for the unforeseen. The artist and her work of art react to each other. Like in transformations of her own life, which depends on the loss of control, the artist commits to fully engage in the process. The result are works that give an idea of what appears, and yet do not fix the outcome, giving space to the viewer. Using wooden sticks as well as ashes and soils for drawing, the artist evokes the motif of transition and the connection to fundamental, natural laws. Painted and drawn at a human scale, the works invite for individual contemplation, aiming to establish an intimate link to each viewer who takes the time to look at them. Rather than big and imposing, they are silent and open, inviting to contemplation and conversation as much as conversion.