program

As part of her residency in Munich, Gala Berger gave an artist talk in Schirin Kretschmann’s class, reflecting on her transnational practice shaped by feminist, decolonial, and collaborative approaches. In the talk, she shared her artistic journey, shaped by her experiences and research across Latin America, Africa, and Europe. Using found materials, references to pre-Columbian art, Caribbean poetry, and digital databases, she explores themes of identity, colonialism, restitution, and cultural memory through a mix of textiles and digital 3D imagery.

Berger traced her trajectory from Costa Rica and the Caribbean to Peru, West Africa, and Germany, sharing how local political contexts, restitution debates, and collective memory influence her work. She addressed topics such as extraction, invisibility, and the politics of museum collections, notably through her research on looted artefacts, Interpol’s database, and the Humboldt Forum. Her recent pieces explore how spiritual, ecological, and cultural forms of knowledge—often made inaccessible—can be reactivated through artistic processes.

Throughout, she emphasized the tension between digital imagery and material presence, questioning dominant narratives and proposing speculative, embodied counter-archives.

Afterwards she offered one-on-one conversations to interested students of the Academy.

The exhibition Luz del Sur presents works created by artist Gala Berger during her residency at AIR-M Ebenböckhaus.

Gala Berger works across disciplines, drawing from her involvement in independent spaces, textile practices, and collaborations within activist groups. These facets and cooperative works inform and nourish her textile collage pieces, blurring the boundaries between work and collective activity. Her practice unfolds through collecting materials, exchanging, and listening—approaches that shape both the content and form of her works.

A central concern in her practice is the construction of images from open archives to reflect on repair within the Latin American context. By assembling commonly circulated or underexamined visual material, she evokes overlooked narratives—especially those marginalized by colonial Western frameworks—and connects them to contemporary urgencies. Her installations incorporate a wide range of elements: water, fabrics, pigments, soil, digital files, tablecloths, paper, prints, and oral histories. These are composed into mobiles, wall hangings, and large-format textile works.

Luz del Sur [Südliches Licht] continues this line of work. Produced in Munich during the summer of 2025, the series takes its title from an electric utility company in Lima, where the artist currently lives. Here, the reference becomes a point of connection—between cities, between dim light and shadow, organic matter and industrial surfaces. The works also reflect Berger’s research on the history of German shadow theatre carried out during her residency, where she revisited local collections and archives to trace possible links with Latin American narratives. In this way, the exhibition expands her interest in hybrid traditions and in how images and stories migrate across geographies.
Fragmentation is another recurring element: multiplicity as a method. Like whispers from diverse backgrounds conversing simultaneously, the works emphasize a collective, plural, and mutable dimension—a kind of practice that speaks of many worlds.

Gala Berger (b. 1983, Argentina) is an artist, curator, and researcher based between Lima and Mexico City. Her work is grounded in Latin America and often unfolds through the creation of independent platforms. She is a member of Retablos por la memoria, a collective producing street interventions for human rights in Peru, and Colección Cooperativa, an experimental project exploring collective ownership in art. From 2018 to 2025, she co-founded and ran Casa MA, a space dedicated to diverse identities in Central America. Berger was a fellow at ICI Kampala, Uganda (2022), and at RAW Académie CURA #6 in Senegal (2019). In Buenos Aires, she co-founded La Ene – New Energy Museum of Contemporary Art (2010–2020) and the Paraguay Printed Art Fair. Her work has been presented in exhibitions across cities including Santo Domingo, São Paulo, Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Seoul, Querétaro, Sorocaba, Medellín, Montreal, Tampere, Rio de Janeiro, San Juan, San José, Guatemala City, Stockholm, Santiago, and Rosario.
Since 2022, Berger has collaborated with policymakers from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Environment and researchers from the Joint Research Centre on a project concerning agriculture in the Amazon. This initiative also includes Shipibo artist Metsá Rama and explores the intersections of art, ecology, and Indigenous knowledge.

Organised by Salta art, in collaboration with Space nn.
Berger is currently an artist in residence at AIR-M Ebenböckhaus, a collaboration between the City of Munich’s Department of Arts and Culture and Salta art.

Exhibition text by curator Laura Ganda.