Ursula Biemann
Born in 1955.
Ursula Biemann is documented as the author of audiovisual works and texts addressing mobility and geopolitical issues (8 September 1955). Her career is characterised by a recurring engagement with migration, mobility and borders, as well as by investigations into gender and the hold exerted by technologies; more recently, ecological concerns and human/non-human relations have been added to these concerns.
At an institutional level, she worked in a curatorial capacity at Shedhalle Zürich from 1995 to 1998.
Performing the Border (1999) is presented in the sources as a video essay dated 1999 (stated duration: 43 minutes). Writing Desire (2000) is another major video essay from the early years of her artistic practice, dated 2000.
Sahara Chronicle, documented as a video anthology produced between 2006 and 2009, is described in the sources as an ensemble of several videos (one of the supporting documents refers to an anthology of 12 videos). The body of her fieldwork was brought together in presentations under titles such as Mission Reports, a term used for both exhibitions and publications covering the period 1998–2008.
The Mission Reports series was the subject of exhibitions in academic and cultural institutions, with presentations recorded at Bildmuseet in Umeå and Nikolaj Contemporary Art Center in Copenhagen between 2007 and 2009, as well as a solo presentation at Nikolaj in 2009. A solo exhibition is also documented at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) in Berlin in 2013.
Alongside her videos, Ursula Biemann has published texts and monographs: titles cited include Geography and the Politics of Mobility (2003) and the volume bringing together Mission Reports, which documents an artistic field practice between 1998 and 2008.
Her works are mentioned as being held in several public collections and holdings; the institutions explicitly cited in the file include Centre Pompidou (Rennes), Migros Museum, Musée d’Art du Valais (Sion), Bundeskunstsammlung, Kunsthaus Zürich and Generali Foundation in Vienna.
The method highlighted by the sources combines field investigation, critical writing and audiovisual editing to address cross-cutting issues — migration, borders, gender — and, in more recent works, questions relating to ecology and relations between humans and non-humans.