BIO

Nataša Berk (1978) is a diverse and versatile contemporary artist. She operates in the broader field of contemporary culture, often assuming various identities. Sometimes she works as a curator or gallerist and sometimes as a selector or collector. And she is only five million euros away from being an art dealer. Her work cannot be categorized as or confined to any specific genre and she refuses to be framed. The sharpness of her thoughts is hidden behind the naivety of a child’s perception of the world. She describes herself as an ironic and provocative avant-gardist of existentialism with a noticeable abstract instinct. After attending the High School for Design and Photography in Ljubljana, she enrolled at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts (Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Wien), where she received her master’s in 2005. Many of her identities’ works have been exhibited at numerous group and solo shows, both at home and abroad, from Art Moscow to Beirut Station, from Berlin to Beijing – from Vienna to Bratislava is went quickly, while in Marseille someone fell in love –, and from Ruše through Maribor to Ljubljana. Maybe she is too old for New York, but Tokyo is always on her mind. Nataša Berk and all her 23 personas believe that art can be anything but a competition. She works here and there, and exists everywhere.

WORK AT THE EXHIBTION

Censorship Project, 2015/16

I initiated this censorship to assert my right to not have my face published without my permission, and to highlight the importance of exercising our rights in every possible way – especially today. The lack of awareness and seeming insignificance of this right turned it into an art project for me. As an artist, this project has become an important way for me to be present, since the lack of visibility actually makes me more visible and arouses curiosity. It also expresses even more consciously that art does not need a specific, dedicated space in order to be considered art and presented as such. The project opens up opportunities for collaboration that rely heavily on the trust of all participants, as in the almost 10 years of its duration I have also had to veto some collaborations. If possible, this censored art form can be created and presented in parallel, in between, and on the side – whenever and however. There are still some other interesting and multifaceted aspects of this project that I will not explore here, in order to not make the work on the project more difficult or complicated.