• Whatever

• About
  • An Interview with Donatella Bernardi (2010)
  • Download portfolio (March 2020, pdf, 26,2 Mb)
  • Contact

• Exhibitions
  • Morelli Freud Holmes (2018-2019)
  • From Abdizuel to Zymeloz (2018)
  • The Belly of the Phoenix (2017)
  • Same Same But Different (2015)
  • Morgenröte, aurora borealis and Levantin… (2015)
  • Barbabietole e meringue (2014)
  • Helvetic Zebra (2014)
  • Smoking Up Ambition! (2014)
  • The Hacker Grail (2013)
  • JJR Pole Dance (2011)
  • Pour «Play Bach» (2010–2011)
  • L’intermédiaire (2009–2010)
  • God Doesn’t Play Dice, He Smoothes the Edges (2009)
  • Post Tenebras Luxe (2009)
  • Les Barbus (2009)
  • Talking Object HA (2008)
  • L’Ane & le Lion (2008)
  • Wunder Stanza (2007–2008)
  • Retourner sa veste (2005–2008)
  • Sur la paille (2004)

• Publications
  • PhD (2018)
  • Into Your Solar Plexus (2016)
  • In Pursuit of Unlimited Hospitality (2014)
  • I got a manicure (2013)
  • Post Tenebras Luxe (2009)
  • L’Ane & le Lion (2008)

• Lectures
  • Ego Teaching (2012)

• Movies
  • Our Last Sonata (2010–2012)
  • Les héritiers de la Comtesse (2009)
  • Peccato mistico/short (2009)
  • Fortuna Berlin (2005)

• Eternal Tour
  • Eternal Tour São Paulo (2012)
  • Eternal Tour Genève (2012)
  • Deserting Las Vegas (2011)
  • Eternal Tour Jerusalem (2010)
  • Eternal Tour Neuchâtel (2009)
  • Eternal Tour Rome (2008)

Talking Object
HA

The installation Talking Object HA (2008) can be seen as an ‘anti-monument’ dedicated to Arendt, the philosopher of 20th-century totalitarianism. At the beginning of her posthumous book The Life of the Mind (1978) Hannah Arendt writes: “There’s no subject which isn’t also object and appears as such to the other, guarantying its ‘objective’ reality… The fact that I’m aware of myself isn’t enough to guarantee this reality.” Donatella Bernardi uses the perspective on life encapsulated in this quote to rethink power relationships within the collective and society at large, reconsidering amongst others gender issues.

The viewer in the exhibition was invited to walk on a 10 metre-long sticker on the floor. Its patterns combined medieval decorative motifs from the Cosmati School which harks back to antiquity, with contemporary logos and, in the middle of the composition, the philosopher’s initials. Womanhood is a recurrent subject in Bernardi’s work, which in Talking Object HA she renders as synonymous with fighting.

Background picture by Niels Wehrspann.
Installation photos by Martin Widmer.