My work spans critical museum and anarchival practices, as well as postcolonial and postmigrant urban space. I engage with border regimes, critical feminist geography, and decolonial approaches through artistic-ethnographic methods. I work at the intersection of art, anthropology, and cultural heritage, engaging with object-based installations, performance-based sound art, and curatorial processes grounded in feminist ethics of care. I am particularly interested in collaborative and transacademic exhibition-making and urban-walk interventions that draw on multisensory and collective practices to challenge conventional ethnographic and museum display methods. More recently, my research has turned toward multispecies studies, with a focus on the sonic dimensions of oceans and deserts, approached through archipelagic, postcolonial oceanic, and exhausted ecologies perspectives.
I am an artist, researcher, and scholar based in Berlin. I am the co-founder and curator of NomadicArt and NomadicRadio, platforms that explore themes of migration, neighborhood, and community storytelling. I am also a member of the Amo Collective, which has been involved in the campaign to rename Berlin M* Streat as Anton-Whilmen-Amo-Streat and envision a space for collective memory addressing Urban colonial history in Berlin.
I hold a PhD from the Institute of European Ethnology at Humboldt University in Berlin, supervised by Regina Römhild and Bonaventure Ndikung. I also hold a Master’s degree in Restoration and Conservation of Cultural Heritage from Palazzo Spinelli, Italy, and a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Art from the University of Chile.
My work has been presented internationally in both solo and group exhibitions. I have curated collaborative exhibitions across Germany, Italy, and Chile, and have received several prizes and research grants, including the Global Connectivity in Maritime Perspective Fellowship at the German Maritime Museum / Leibniz Institute for Maritime History (2025, Postdoc), Culture Moves Europe (2025), Urban Praxis / Department of Culture and Social Cohesion of the Berlin Senate (2024, 2023, with Amo Collective), the Elsa Neumann Fellowship (2020–2023, PhD), Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (2021, 2022, PhD), the European Commission / Magic Carpet (2018), and the European Cultural Foundation / Compagnia di San Paolo (2017).
My artistic participations include the Kaunas Biennial (2021), Ojo Andino at Fondazione Giorgio Cini in the context of the Venice Biennale (2015), and the Berlin Refugee Memorial / ASI at Maxim Gorki Theater (2015). My works are also part of Luciano Benetton Collection, Imago Mundi Collection, Italy, Lite-Haus Gallery Berlin, Amo Living Archive Berlin, and private collections.
I hold a PhD from the Institute of European Ethnology at Humboldt University in Berlin, supervised by Regina Römhild and Bonaventure Ndikung. I also hold a Master’s degree in Restoration and Conservation of Cultural Heritage from Palazzo Spinelli, Italy, and a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Art from the University of Chile.
My work has been presented internationally in both solo and group exhibitions. I have curated collaborative exhibitions across Germany, Italy, and Chile, and have received several prizes and research grants, including the Global Connectivity in Maritime Perspective Fellowship at the German Maritime Museum / Leibniz Institute for Maritime History (2025, Postdoc), Culture Moves Europe (2025), Urban Praxis / Department of Culture and Social Cohesion of the Berlin Senate (2024, 2023, with Amo Collective), the Elsa Neumann Fellowship (2020–2023, PhD), Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (2021, 2022, PhD), the European Commission / Magic Carpet (2018), and the European Cultural Foundation / Compagnia di San Paolo (2017).
My artistic participations include the Kaunas Biennial (2021), Ojo Andino at Fondazione Giorgio Cini in the context of the Venice Biennale (2015), and the Berlin Refugee Memorial / ASI at Maxim Gorki Theater (2015). My works are also part of Luciano Benetton Collection, Imago Mundi Collection, Italy, Lite-Haus Gallery Berlin, Amo Living Archive Berlin, and private collections.
© L'Aquila Reale
Current academic collaborations:
- Guest artist-researcher at RTG Postcolonial Neighborhoods, DFG project. Institut für Europäische Ethnologie Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Affiliations & Memberships:
- Deutsches Schifffahrtsmuseum, Leibniz-Institut für Maritime Geschichte, Bremerhaven
- Ocean comm/uni/ty TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary
- BBK Berlin Berufsverband bildender Künstler*innen Berlin
- Laboratory Critical Europeanization and Migration Studies | IfEE | University Humboldt Berlín
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Laboratory Amo-Salon/Amo collective Berlin: antiracist and decolonial studies | IfEE | University Humboldt Berlín
- Centro Studi Postcoloniali e di Genere | L'Orientale | Università degli Studi di Napoli
- Georg Simmel Center for Urban Studies | University Humboldt Berlín
© Melanie Garland 2026. All rights reserved