Mariska van den Berg

Qualifications

Mariska van den Berg studied Art History and Art & Management at the University in Groningen where she graduated in 1993, specializing in contemporary video- and film art. In 1995 and 1996 she started curating at Galerie Paul Andriesse in Amsterdam with Summer Shows, featuring emerging artists like Stephen Wilks, Tacita Dean, Gregor Schneider and Antonietta Peeters. Independently she complied and produced artists books with Fiona Tan, Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan and Marlene Dumas.

Van den Berg has been working as curator at SKOR (Foundation Art and Public Space) and was involved in the founding of Platform BK1 in 2011. She still is chair of the board of Platform BK and initiates reading groups, for example on the work of Jacques Rancière (2016 and 2017) and Self Organisation (2018). Mariska van den Berg has been living and working in London (1989) and Berlin (1998) and is currently based in Amsterdam. 
Teaching

At the Master Institute of Visual Cultures Van den Berg teaches General Academic Studies (GAS) and Narratology. GAS consists of a series of dialogue classes, providing the foundation of our intercultural learning community, with a focus on the development of critical frameworks. Topics addressed are feminism, globalization, (cultural) identity, post- and de-colonial thinking, ecological crisis and the anthropocene; all in relation to current artistic practices.

Narratology comprises of dialogue classes as well, here the artwork is central and understood as 'a structured experience'. The focus is on the application (and disruption) of narrative and anti-narrative structures, providing for artworks representing, communicating and evoking experience(s) in an engaging dialectic between ideas, material and context.

 

Specialism 

Her special interests are the place of artistic practices within our changing society and their resonance within the public domain; as well as the role of theory and current discourse within contemporary artistic practice.
Exhibitions & Bibliography 

Mariska van den Berg publishes regularly on contemporary art in magazines like Metropolis M and Kunstlicht. In 2014 she was author of the book Citizens Change the City. On New Collectives, Public Domain and Transition2 addressing the value of self-initiated artistic practices for sustainable urban development, and the debate on civil society. 

In 2017 and 2018 she carried out two consecutive studies commissioned by Trans Artists | Dutch Culture. The first On Impact and Value was an exploratory study of the impact and value of small artists' organizations with an artist-in-residence program in small and medium-sized cities in the Netherlands (executed together with Youri Appelo for Platform BK). The second Performing the Margins explored the nature and potential of artist-in-residence programs 'in the margins'. 

me.vandenberg1@avans.nl