Oscar Enberg

The practice of New Zealand artist Oscar Enberg (*1988 Christchurch, lives in Berlin) is shaped by his fascination for traditional handicraft techniques. He makes objects and installations that explore domestic scenes and often also include references to literature and art history. Enberg works together with manufacturers of traditional or artisanal objects, commissioning them to produce antiquated and tailor-made objects according to his designs.

In the solo exhibition Death of a Housewife (2019) at Stadium in Berlin, for example, Enberg explored the biography of the exceptional Swiss artist and Dada member Sophie Taeuber-Arp, who died in 1943. He created a site-specific installation that looked at the neglect of this artist in art history. Each work in the installation was a paraphrase of Taueber-Arp’s own series of Dada Heads. The exhibition thus became a sort of crypto-portrait of the artist, oscillating between representation and referentiality. For Domestic Drama Enberg draws on that previous exhibition, which was produced in dialogue with curator Cathrin Mayer, and creates a brush object with a stylized head and bristles that recalls clumsy children’s potato cuts or the headdresses of medieval armor. Silly charming glass eyes gaze at the viewer and raise a chuckle. This work was made especially for Domestic Drama, transferring its different levels of meaning into the exhibition and showing the artist’s untiring attempt to combine a form of education with poetic expression.