About Leonie Brandner’s Artistic Research

Leonie Brandner makes objects out of everyday materials, she stitches, sings and writes. She is interested in material narratives, how things hold stories and how materials are tied up in narrative experience. She is invested in dreams and wishful thinking, as much as functionality and feeling like a necessary part of a system – in short she is interested in belonging, how we belong, how things belong to situations that are complex, confusing and at times impossible to understand with reason. Yet somehow, we all belong together – the loss, the hurt, the joy, the humans, plants, animals, rocks and minerals. That is why Leonie Brandner invested in making ecosystems: installations in which the individual parts, objects, scents, texts, songs and video alike are not only referenced but dependent on each other. Her work is influenced by botany, feminist practices, by stories that are handed down from one generation to the next and a deep ecological concern for the care we return to the environment we are part of. 

She cherishes the fragile, the delicate and the tenderness as the vitality and determination of her practice. She works with textures, texture as stories, textures as something resonating in the hollow of the mouth, vibrating under the tips of fingers or as an aftertaste on tongues. And it is these textures, that bring the various aspects of her work together in kaleidoscopical worlds on the edge of evaporation.

Artist Bio

Leonie Brandner grew up in Switzerland and completed an art foundation course at the University for Applied Sciences in Lucerne. She then continued with a BA in Fine Art at the Chelsea College of Art in London. She graduated in 2016 with a First Class Honors. During her undergraduate studies, Leonie Brandner was able to show her work as part of the UK Young Artist Festivals and the artist was selected to be a member of the Barbican Young Visual Arts Group 2014. In 2017 she moved to Berlin and became the curator of the project space Donaugang. In 2018 Leonie Brandner was selected by the British Council in Germany for their Emerging Artist programme. 

In 2021 she graduated with distinction from the Masters Artistic Research at the Royal Academy in The Hague, was nominated for the Master Project Prize and won the department prize for the Master Thesis 2021. Over the past few years, her work has among others been supported by the Stichting Stokroos, Stroom Den Haag, the Aargauer Kuratorium, Gwärtler Stiftung, the Jaap Harten Fonds and the Patronagefonds for young Swiss artists. Her work has been shown in exhibitions at the Aargauer Kunsthaus (CH), the Barbican Greenhouse (UK), Stroom Den Haag (NL), Liebermann Villa (DE), and the Casino Display (LU) alongside several artist-run spaces across Europe.

Website: Leonie Brandner