I grew up in Venezuela, a petrostate where the extravagance of Caribbean nature coexists with everyday violence. Shaped by a colonial legacy, the country’s history has been determined by oil extraction and its social and geopolitical consequences. I grew up in the ’80s hearing: we are a rich country because we have oil, yet everything around me contradicted that phrase. In 2009 I emigrated to Germany, where questions about my petro-identity and the so-called resource curse haunted my work for more than a decade, up to the present. Through sculpture, installation, assemblage, photography, and video, I research the material and speculative dimensions of extractivism.
Mines are enigmatic places, I believe they hold the true roots of modern society. I am interested in how multiple dimensions converge and condense within every mine at once: geological, geopolitical, technological and historical. I have walked with my camera around oil platforms, and gold, copper, iron, and uranium mines, watching my step so as not to fall into some chemical lagoon or expose myself to high levels of radioactivity. All of these experiences implicate the body, and that is why they stay with you—not as anecdotes, but as a way of understanding how mining, oil, and minerals are not merely resources, but also archives: material records of the relations of power, violence, and desire that determine our culture.
My artistic practice begins with collecting and salvaging scrap metal, hoses, oil drums, drills, cables, and other debris from the extractive apparatus, transforming them into kinetic sculptures, spaces, and speculative machines that operate in cycles, all of which interrupt their original utilitarian function. Far from being dead or inert, these objects carry the memory of the territories from which they were torn, and of the hands that once operated them. This denaturalization does not simply seek to denounce; rather, it opens a poetic crack in the productivist logic of petroculture, making visible the shadow places of extraction, those sacrifice zones that silently sustain our contemporary ways of life.
I am particularly interested in the temporality and cycles of these processes. Some unfold gradually and almost imperceptibly: the slow violence of a spill seeping into soil, chemical contamination accumulating over years, the quiet consolidation of a petro-regime. Others erupt without warning, like the collapse of a mine or the blast of an explosion. What I identify in both cases is a predatory logic, which I try to reproduce and transform in my installations through closed circuits and absurd systems, in order to think through the different sensibilities and rhythms by which extractive violence inscribes itself on human and nonhuman bodies alike.
My artistic research grows out of fieldwork and dialogue with communities, activists, and scientists in mining regions across different countries, times, and realities—from Venezuela, Chile, or Ghana, where gold, copper, coltan, and lithium are not financial abstractions but living matter, to regions like Germany, Spain, and Italy, where most of the technologies of extraction originated and were developed. Every conversation with a miner, every site visit, becomes part of an expanding archive that I carry back into the studio. By bringing and hacking real machinery —drills, motors, mining cabins, sluice box systems— into exhibition spaces, I invite viewers to confront and reimagine, aesthetically and haptically, what the global energy imaginary prefers to keep out of sight.
CV
*1982, Caracas, Venezuela, based in Berlin.
Education
2015 Universität der Künste Berlin, MFA. Institut für Kunst im Kontext. DE
2012 Bauhaus Universität Weimar, MFA. Medienkunst und Medien Gestaltung. DE
2004 Instituto Universitario de Educación Superior de Artes Plásticas Armando Reverón,
Diploma in Fine Art.Caracas, Venezuela.
Fellowships and awards
2026 Dorothea-Erxleben-Stipendium HBK, DE
2022 Recherchestipendium Bildende Kunst . Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa, DE.
2022 Modul C NEUSTART KULTUR / BBK-Bundesverband. DE
2021 Arbeitsstipendium Stiftung Kunstfonds, DE.
2021 Arbeitsstipendium Gwärtler Stiftung, Schweiz.
2020 Artist Residency Grant Villa Sträuli, Winterthur, CH.
2019 Artist Residency Grant “ Zu Gast bei Urbane Künste Ruhr und bei den KunstVereinRuhr”. DE
2019 Artist Residency Grant Goethe Institut Chile. CL
2018 Special Mention Berlin Art Prize, DE.
2018 Finalistin der Karl-Schmidt-Rottluff-Stipendiaten. DE.
2017 Recherchestipendium Bildende Kunst 2017. Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa, Deutschland.
2009–2011 Stipendium für akademische Exzellenz, DAAD. Bonn, DE
Solo Exhibitions
2025 A ella le gusta la gasolina. ABRA galería, Caracas, Venezuela.
2024 ISLAND INNOVATOR. Kunstverein Arnsberg / 22.03. -19.05.2024. DE
2023 Como es Arriba es Abajo. Centro de Arte La Regenta. Gran Canarias. ESP
2022 Mad Rush. Nkrumah Voli-ni, Tamale, Ghana
2020 Die Mine Gibt, die Mine nimmt, Kommunale Galerie Wedding, Berlin.
2018 Green and Yellow, Institut for Endotic Research. Berlin. DE
2016 Fake Supply. Addaya Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst. Mallorca. ESP
2015 Tropical Curse. Projektraum Kinderhook and Caracas. Berlin. DE
2014 Boom and Bust. Galeria Oficina # 1. VE
2012 Mecanismos encontrados. Galeria Oficina #1. Caracas. VE
Groups Exhibitions and Events (Selection)
2026 Soleil Noir/ Villa Medici / Italy
2026 Biennial: Ressources Sensibles / Villa du Parc, Francia / La Comédie, Suiza.
2026 Müll / Ostwall Museum Dortmund / DE
2025 The Three-Legged Cat / 18th Istanbul Biennial / IST
2025 22. Kunstfestival Begehungen im Rahmen der Kulturhauptstadt Chemnitz 2025 / DE
2025 Barnalle II / Los Angeles Art space. / Günsteröde / DE
2025 water marks /Artistic interventions in the Thermal Baths and the Casino of Royat / FR
2024 Forgive Us Our Trespasses / Das Haus der Kulturen der Welt HKW / Berlin, DE
2024 SALT. CLAY. ROCK. On Nuclear Pasts and Radiant Futures NGBK / Berlin, DE
2024 Forgive Us Our Trespasses / Das Haus der Kulturen der Welt / Berlin, DE
2024 Donde cruzan los humos espero una semilla/ Casa encendida/ Madrid. España
2024 El Sur – Narratives of Extraction/ Kunsthalle Färgfabriken. Stockholm.
2024 Vanishing structures. Politiken des Verschwindens/ Kunsthalle Exnergasse. Wien
2024 -162 °C, 450 kg/m3 - Fossile Energie, fragile Zukunft / Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven. DE
2023 70 Jahre Kunstverein Reutlingen.What comes next?! Kunstverein Reutlingen / DE
2022 STREETFIGHT / Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw / Poland
2022 Landscape of Labour KAI 10 | ARTHENA FOUNDATION / Düsseldorf / DE
2022 Geneva Biennale: Sculpture Garden / Schweiz
2022 Cabilla / TEA Tenerife Espacio de Arte / Spain
2022 The Driving Factor. NGBK / Berlin/ DE
2022 Omnibus. KINDERHOOK & CARACAS / Berlin/ DE
2021 Schönheit Und Schrecken Des Erdölzeitalters, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg/ DE
2021 Metabolic Rift. Atonal Berlin, Kraftwerk Berlin / DE
2021 Ruhr Ding: Klima, Urbane Künste Ruhr / DE
2021 Museo de la Democracia, NGBK Berlin / DE
2020 Fondamenta. Online Project by Artissima Art Fair.
2020 Oil Experience Conference, Museum Stavanger, Norwegen.
2019 The Garden Bridge at Brücke Museum Berlin / DE
2019 Extracción: Liquid Flames of the Solid Core en la Galerija Miroslav Kraljevic, Zagreb
2019 Escrituras contagiadas por Atacama, Galeria No Automatico, Monterrey, Mexico.
2018 Berlin Art Prize. The Shelf. Berlin
2018 Capitalo, Cthulhu, and a Much Hotter Compost Pile. Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien. Berlin
2018 Eine Enzyklopädie des Zarten, Galerie im Körnerpark. Berlin
2018 CAPRI BY NIGHT Schauspiel Köln am Offenbachplatz.
2018 „DeConstrucción: Arte Contemporáneo Venezolano” Salon Aniversario 37, ARCO, Madrid.
2017 Money Laundering, SixtyEight Art Institute, Kurator: Rodolfo Andaur. Kopenhagen, DK
2017 Plástica protocolar, Galería LADRÓN, CDMX, MEX.
2016 Homeland Agenda. Collaboration with Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck, Galerie Martin Janda, Wien, AT
2016 Unlearning the Given, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, DE
2016 In Situ, Centro de Arte Casall Son Tugores, Mallorca, SP
2015 Kunstfest: Illmenow 11, Josephstr.12, Leipzig, DE
2014 Panorámica. Arte Emergente en Venezuela, 2000-2012 , TAC, Caracas, VE
2014 Premio Jóvenes con Fia, Ciudad Banesco, Caracas, VE
2013 Premio Mendoza #12, Sala Mendoza, Caracas, VE
2012 Wenn ich renne, rennt auch die Welt mit, Neues Museum Weimar, DE
2010 12th International Multimedial Art Festival , Multimedial Art Studio Gallery in Odzaci, SRB
2008 XIII International Festival of Performance. Ex Teresa Arte Actual, DF, MEX
2008 Perfoartnet, Museo de arte contemporáneo de Caracas, Venezuela y Museo de arte contemporáneo de Bogotá, COL
2007 Expresiones paralelas , Museo Alejandro Otero, Caracas, VE
2007 Ensemble of Women, Centro Cultural Matucana 100, Santiago de Chile, CHL
Publications (Selection)
2023.- What the Mine Gives, the Mine Takes. Ana Alenso. Bom Dia, Boa Tarde, Boa Noite Verlag. 2023. DE
2021.- Öl. Schönheit und Schrecken des Erdölzeitalters, Editors: Andreas Beitin, Alexander Klose und
Benjamin Steininger. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König
2019.- Terremoto Magazin N14. Conversation with Erik del Bufalo. MEX.
2019.- Artist Project section at ARTMargins. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. USA
Contact me: studioalenso(@)gmail.com
Instagram: @anaalenso
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