Archive and Materiality. Artist talk with Sonya Schönberger

Berlin-based artist Sonya Schönberger will speak about her approach to archives and materials. She will discuss how historical documents, personal testimonies, and found objects inform her artistic practice and shape her methods of storytelling. The talk will offer insight into the ways she transforms those materials into visual narratives that connect individual memories with broader historical contexts. 

Sonya Schönberger is a Berlin-based artist whose practice deals with biographical ruptures against the backdrop of political or social upheaval. The source of her artistic exploration are the people themselves, who tell about it in biographical conversations. This is how some archives were created, but also already existing, partly found archives flow into her work. In 2018, she initiated the “Berliner Zimmer,” a long-term video archive based on the stories of people in Berlin. 

The artist talk is the closing event of the exhibition Shifting Perspectives: If the Berlin Wind Blows My Flag. The Story of a West Berlin Fellowship. The exhibition explores how the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program (Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD, BKP) operated during the Cold War, tracing the interplay between political and cultural institutions and artistic practices. The BKP aimed, on the one hand, to bring international artists to West Berlin in order to overcome the city’s “cultural isolation,” and, on the other, to provide opportunities for artists to engage with a more international audience—many of whom also felt isolated by the political and cultural constraints of their own countries. Numerous participants came from Central and Eastern Europe, crossing the divide created by the Iron Curtain, to reach a city that was itself the most potent symbol of that very division. In addition to works by artists who participated in the residency program, the exhibition also features art practitioners who, for various reasons, were unable to benefit from the same opportunity—even though they would have fully deserved a place there. The incorporation of contemporary artists’ perspectives through new works, alongside insights gained from the institution’s archives, reinforces this critical approach to the history and legacy of the BKP program. 
Curators: Lukács Nóra, Melanie Roumiguière 

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The program will be held in English, with simultaneous interpretation into Hungarian.

Participation in the program is free. 

The event is part of the Freedom Trap series, presented in connection with the exhibition and organized in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Budapest and the Blinken OSA Archivum. The series takes its name from Hajnal Németh’s performance of the same title.