My work spans museum and archival practices and postcolonial and postmigrant urban spaces. I engage with border regimes, postcolonial studies, critical feminist geography, and decolonial approaches through artistic and ethnographic methods. I work at the intersection of art, anthropology, and cultural heritage, using object-based installations, sound art, and curatorial processes grounded in feminist ethics of care. I am particularly interested in collaborative and transacademic exhibitions and public 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 a interdisplinary artist, researcher, and scholar based in Berlin. I hold a PhD in Philosophy from the Institute of European Ethnology at Humboldt University of Berlin, where I was supervised by cultural anthropologist Prof. Dr. Regina Römhild and curator-theorist Prof. Dr. Bonaventure Ndikung. I also hold a Master’s degree in Restoration and Conservation of Cultural Heritage, specialized training in museum collection management from the Institute Palazzo Spinelli in Italy, and a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Art from the University of Chile.
I am the co-founder of NomadicArt, an art platform that explores themes of migration, neighborhood, and community storytelling, and co-curator and founder of NomadicRadio, a platform for sound and radio exchanges centered on urbanism, migration, and sonority as decolonial practices. I am also a member of the Amo Collective, a neighborhood initiative and event space based at Humboldt University’s Institute for European Ethnology in Berlin. Through this collective, I am involved in the campaign to rename Berlin-Mitte’s M* Strasse and envision a space for collective memory, fostering dialogue around colonial history and the possibilities of convivial futures.
My work has been exhibited internationally in countries such as Germany, Austria, Italy, France, the USA, China, Bolivia, and Turkey, among others. Additionally, I have curated collaborative exhibitions and cultural events between Germany, Italy, and Chile, and have received several EU, German, and Chilean research funding. My artistic participations include the Kaunas Biennial 2021, Ojo Andino exhibition in Fondazione Cini in the context of Biennale di Venezia 2015, Berlin Refugee Memorial, ASI Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin 2015. And also my works are part of Luciano Benetton collection Imago Mundi Italy, Lite-Haus Gallery, Amo Living Archive Berlin, and private collections.
I am the co-founder of NomadicArt, an art platform that explores themes of migration, neighborhood, and community storytelling, and co-curator and founder of NomadicRadio, a platform for sound and radio exchanges centered on urbanism, migration, and sonority as decolonial practices. I am also a member of the Amo Collective, a neighborhood initiative and event space based at Humboldt University’s Institute for European Ethnology in Berlin. Through this collective, I am involved in the campaign to rename Berlin-Mitte’s M* Strasse and envision a space for collective memory, fostering dialogue around colonial history and the possibilities of convivial futures.
My work has been exhibited internationally in countries such as Germany, Austria, Italy, France, the USA, China, Bolivia, and Turkey, among others. Additionally, I have curated collaborative exhibitions and cultural events between Germany, Italy, and Chile, and have received several EU, German, and Chilean research funding. My artistic participations include the Kaunas Biennial 2021, Ojo Andino exhibition in Fondazione Cini in the context of Biennale di Venezia 2015, Berlin Refugee Memorial, ASI Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin 2015. And also my works are part of Luciano Benetton collection Imago Mundi Italy, Lite-Haus Gallery, Amo Living Archive Berlin, and private collections.
© L'Aquila Reale
Current academic collaborations:
- Guest researcher at RTG Postcolonial Neighborhoods, DFG project. Institut für Europäische EthnologieHumboldt, Universität zu Berlin
Affiliations & Memberships:
- Deutsches Schifffahrtsmuseum, Leibniz-Institut für Maritime Geschichte, Bremerhafen
- 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 2025. All rights reserved