Nadja Schöllhammer

Born 1971 in Esslingen am Neckar/Germany.

She studied German and Romance literature and language at the University of Stuttgart, the Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Madrid, and the Humboldt University in Berlin, as well as Visual Arts at the University of the Arts (UdK) in Berlin.

Nadja Schöllhammer produces drawings, three dimensional wall works and installations made by paper and organic material. In her works, she interweaves collective fantasies with her own inner mental space into mazy image structures. Tactility, immediate sensual perception, material transformation, and ephemeral structures are important aspects of her work. She is interested in non-rational forces, appearing in the turning moment where control gets lost and beauty turns into subliminal violence.

Selected solo exhibitions: »STYX«, kunst galerie fürth (gallery of town), Fürth, Germany (2008), »Aussaugen«, Laura Mars Grp. gallery, Berlin (2006) and »Arena«, momentum gallery, Berlin (2004).

Selected group exhibitions: »Compilation IV«, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2009), »wohnen sitzen glauben«, Kunstverein Regensburg, Germany (2008), »MAGMA – Goldrausch 2006«, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin; »Über Schönheit«, online project (www.ueber-beauty.com), House of World Cultures, Berlin (2005); »The Free Willl«, former bunker Treptow, Berlin (2005); »Nawaral Lelmal«, Goethe Institute Rabat, Marokko (2005), »Stipendiaten der Karl Hofer Gesellschaft«, Haus am Kleistpark, Berlin (2004), »Colours of Berlin«, Kunst-Werke, Berlin (2002), and »Violett – wass kan dinsky?«, art-/theater project, Berlin/Zurich/Moscow, L gallery and Ulica OGI gallery, Moscow (1999-2001).

In 2007 Nadja Schöllhammer received a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) travel grant for Colombia. She was supported by the postgraduate professional programme Goldrausch Art IT, Berlin in 2006. In 2005, she travelled to Mexico with a DAAD grant for her research about Mexican »day of the dead« cult. In the same year, she received a NaFöG postgraduate grant from the Berlin Senate for Science, Research and Culture, and participated in a journey to Morocco with the artists group Nawarak Lelmal. Earlier, she received a working grant by the Stiftung Kunstfonds, Bonn (2004) and the Helmut-Thoma Prize for Painting, University of the Arts (UdK), Berlin (2003).