Margareta Kern (b 1974, Croatia/Bosnia-Herzegovina) is a London based artist using photography, video and performance to explore ways in which personal spaces and narratives are influenced by the socio-political movements.
A graduate of Goldsmiths College (1998), Kern has shown her work nationally including the Tate Modern, Djanogly Gallery and Castlefield Gallery, and internationally including the recent solo exhibition at the renowned PM & Bacva gallery in Zagreb, Croatia. Her projects have received support from the Arts Council England, the British Film Institute, the Croatian Ministry of Culture and the City of Zagreb, and most recently she was awarded the photography bursary by the National Media Museum, Bradford, and was an artist-in-residence in Berlin funded by the British Council.
"My works have always negotiated between the outer boundaries of identity, its socio-political context and the inner, subtler workings and needs of the self. I explore a relational way of working, where the site of engagement with the personal narratives, becomes the context within which the process of art making takes place.
In my recent projects I have used clothing and textiles as a way of opening and entering issues linked to gendered constructions of identity and its social, political and cultural contexts.
My experience of migrating from one culture to another, rather abruptly at the beginning of the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, quietly underlines my work and interest in stories that resonate with unresolved questions of place, belonging and home."
"The exhibition “Clothes for Living & Dying” is a work of a young woman, from Banja Luka, who in 1992, without having her own graduation, fleeing the war, immigrated to the United Kingdom. She stayed there, finished her education and formed views on the world, and her own identity.
But, as a person can’t become something else, without ceasing to be what they already are; in other words, it’s impossible to erase identities, instead one can layer them one on top of the other, in the way the women layer their clothes for death. In that same way, Margareta Kern, by being in her mother’s tailoring salon, and photographing in the Banjaluka homes, has done a very important self-reflective act. The imitation of life, which she captured through the graduation dresses, is in fact, in the broadest possible way, an imitation of an identity. One cannot get rid of an identity, no matter how much one wanted, no matter how much one didn’t need it anymore and no matter how much it seemed like an imitation."
By Miljenko Jergovic for Jutarnji List, Croatia, 29.05.2008 to continue reading in English click here, in Croatian click here.
PUBLICATIONS
2008: "Clothes for Living & Dying" catalogue, published by the University of Hertfordshire, with essays by Pennina Barnett, Dr Alex Rotas, Matthew Shaul and Margareta Kern
2008: Making Sense of Death, Dying and Bereavement: An Anthology Published in association with The Open University, by Bartholomew, Earle and Komaromy
2007; 'What Remains' by Margareta Kern, published on the Refugee Week Blog
2005; Necessary Journeys Publication, published by the Arts Council England and Tate Modern, edited by Melanie Keen and Eileen Daly
REVIEWS/ARTICLES selection
2009: Sasijmo bijelu kocku/Let's saw a white cube, by Ivana Podnar for Vijenac, Croatia, Feb '09
2009: Dress Rehearsal: Margareta Kern's Clothes for Living & Dying, by Liz Hoggard, Selvedge Magazine, March/April '09
2009: Dressing up for life's journey, by Emma Clayton, Argus & Telegraph Bradford, Feb '09
2008: Female Jesus of the photographer Margareta Kern, exhibition review by Miljenko Jergovic, Jutarnji List, Zagreb 29.05.08 English/ Croatian
2008: Pola Ure Kulture/Half Hour of Culture, Croatian TV/HTV, May 08.
2008: Review of Odavde/from here/Otuda/from there, for River Front Times, St Louis, Feb '08
2008: Cry me cats and dogs, a review by Alex Rotas of the Performing Rights Glasgow on Axis .
2008: Raimi Gbadamosi interviews Margareta Kern & Grace Ndiritu for Axis Dialogue
2007; The Big Issue, Review of Clothes for Death by Sarah Jane Downing
2007; ArtRabbit interview by Beth Greenacre
2007; a-n Magazine, July 2007 edition, Projects Unlimited, Clothes for Death
2006; The Guide, Exhibition preview and Critics Choice, The Guardian
2005; Time Out, Action Heroes, Election 2005 Reporter
2004; Third Text, Alex Rotas, Vol. 18, Issue 1, p51-60
RESIDENCIES
2009: Milchhoff Studios, Berlin, funded by the British Council (February and March 2009)
2008: Back to Heritage – Utopian Island, Zadar, Croatia (June 2008)
AWARDS
2009: The British Council Residency in Berlin
2008/09: The National Media Museum Photography Bursary, Bradford, UK
2008: The British Council, Croatian Ministry of Culture and City of Zagreb Artist Grant, Arts Council England and the University of Hertfordshire Galleries - for the solo touring exhibition ‘Clothes for Living & Dying’
2006/07: Research & Development Award ‘Clothes for Death’, Arts Council England
2005: Travel bursary ‘Necessary Journeys’, Arts Council England and the British Film Institute
2005: Individual Artist Award, project “Kolachnikov”, Arts Council England
1995 - 1998: Recipient of the Open Society Institute scholarship
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