Untitled (Stowing the mainsail) Collage

Michelle-Marie Letelier (Chile, 1977) lives and works in Berlin. Her work orchestrates transformations of natural resources, alongside extensive wide-ranging, interdisciplinary research into the landscapes where their exploitation and speculation take place. Through her work, she places together different epochs, regions and societies, examining political-economic, historical and cultural aspects. Since establishing in Berlin in 2007, she has focused her research on five resources: coal, copper, saltpetre, wind and, more recently, salmon. By applying, mixing and constellating their properties—such as electrical conductivity, crystallisation and agency—, chemical and physical transformation processes produce the artworks themselves, as well as their poiesis, beyond the extractive industry and its forms of control. Michelle-Marie Letelier obtained her Bachelor of Arts from the Universidad Católica de Chile in 2000 and has participated in postgraduate programmes such as Goldrausch Künstlerinnenprojekt art IT (Berlin) and as guest student in the Experimental Media Design studies at the Universität der Künste (Berlin). Her work has been shown internationally in biennials, galleries, museums and institutions, among others: Or Gallery (Vancouver); Gropius-Bau (Berlin); Kunstmuseum Bonn; Stanislavsky Electrotheatre (Moscow); Screen City Biennial 2019 (Stavanger); Bienal Sur 2017 (Buenos Aires); El Museo de Los Sures (New York); Kunsthall 3,14 (Bergen); Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende (Santiago); Errant Bodies (Berlin); Museum of Contemporary Art (Santiago); Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Santiago) and Kommunale Galerie Charlottenburg (Berlin). She has been a resident at ISCP (NYC, 2014), USF (Bergen, 2017), Kunstnerhuset (Svolvær, 2018), Magallanes2020 (Punta Arenas, 2018), ISLA (Antofagasta, 2018) and Troms fylkeskultursenter (Tromsø, 2019).