The Studio #2: Morena Bamberger, Ethereality

On Sunday 24 November 2019, Ger Koopmans, deputy for Culture of the Province of Limburg, will open the second edition of the new series The Studio in the Bonnefantenmuseum.

The Studio provides a platform for small-scale solo presentations, in which artists give an account of recent developments in their work. In this second studio presentation, it is the turn of Morena Bamberger (Roermond, 1994), who is presenting Ethereality, a new room-sized work inspired by a journey to Switzerland.

Boundless, intangible imagination and everyday normality

Ethereality is a contraction of two words with opposite meanings: ethereal and reality. The installation of video images shows an alienating mix of boundless, intangible imagination and everyday normality, which is characteristic of this artist. She conjures up her mysterious world with simple materials like plastic sheeting, glitter fabrics and polystyrene sheets that she paints in pastel colours, with turning windmills that scatter moving gleaming lights through the space like stardust. Here and there, projected video images show a world between reality and dream. For the film, Bamberger went on a spiritual journey to the Swiss mountains – a sort of 'vision quest', as she calls it – in order to get closer to her intuition and to experience her vulnerability and her strength. It is the first time that Bamberger herself is the protagonist of her film. Over the past two years, her work has attracted attention for the way in which she explored the surroundings of Roermond with her video camera, and the totally open way in which she filmed friends, family and passers-by. This produced some unexpected, disturbing happenings, as shown in her wonderful graduation film 'Home ground' from 2018.

Sinti community

The wish to create harmonious connections between people, animals and landscape can apparently be explained by her background. She grew up on a caravan camp in the vicinity of Roermond, but chose to follow her own path, away from the close Sinti community, to become the first member of her family to study. In 2017, Bamberger made a film about this, called 'Terug naar de Roedel' (Back to the pack). To do so, she returned to the caravan camp for a while, in an attempt to link up with her family again through her work and experiences.

Stimulating the work of young artists from Limburg

Morena Bamberger is the first recipient of the Limburg Beeldende Kunst Stipendium (LBK), a new grant set up by the Province of Limburg that aims to stimulate the work of young artists from Limburg and bring it to the attention of a wider public. The grant comprises a working period at the Jan van Eyck Academy, an exhibition in 'The Studio' and the sum of € 5,000. The time Morena Bamberger spent at the Jan van Eyck Academy in October and November 2019 is followed by a presentation of her work in the project space of the Bonnefantenmuseum. In 2018, the LBK Stipendium was awarded as the 'Lex ter Braak stipendium' to Lex ter Braak, on leaving his post as director of the Jan van Eyck Academy.

Studio presentation

The studio presentation The Studio #2: Morena Bamberger, Ethereality will be shown in the Bonnefantenmuseum from 26 November 2019 to 12 April 2020.
Note for the press: for a press preview, more information and visual material, please contact Nathan Verberne through pressoffice@bonnefanten.nl or on +31 (0)6-27 49 48 29.

_{Credits: Morena Bamberger, Untitled (work in progress), 2019}