About
Biography · CV
I am not here to tell you what to see, but to create a space where the seeing can be witnessed.
Ole Ukena
Ole Ukena (b. 1983, Germany) is a contemporary artist living and working between Bali and Berlin, with extended formative periods in India, Thailand, Brazil, and Mexico. He trained at the Universität der Künste Berlin (2003–2009) as Meisterschüler of Lothar Baumgarten. He also attended, in parallel, the classes of Daniel Richter, Katharina Sieverding (Visual Culture Studies) and Hito Steyerl (guest professor 2007/08) — naming Steyerl as the teacher who most shaped him.
Ukena's practice spans two registers held in parallel for two decades. The first is conceptual — PEACE (~20,000 toy soldiers forming a peace sign as diptych), TRUST (~15,000 nails: oriented one way they threaten, rotated 180° they form structural support and the word trust), RAINBOW (barbed wire), CHER, CHAIR, SHARE, LOOK AT YOUR/SELF, THE ONE AND ONLY TRUTH, and most recently CINIS (2026), a time-bound conceptual work created for a wedding with a programmed seven-year fade after both subjects' deaths. These works compress opposed terms into single material objects in the lineage of Marcel Broodthaers, Mona Hatoum, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres.
The second register is intuitive and material: large-scale embroidered textile paintings made since 2017 with a sustained studio of artisans in Ubud. The methodology is chalk drawn fast on dark fabric under a flow-state rule, executed by named team members across material translation delays in series-form feedback loops, on reflective surfaces that shift with light and viewer position. The Multiverse series (2020–) extends this into mandalic structures whose rule of identical eight-fold repetition is designed to fail, and whose human imperfection is the work.
Large-scale spatial commissions include Space Bloom / Weltraumblüte (2022), a 12×3 m suspended kinetic sculpture installed permanently at Genezarethkirche Berlin as part of Church of Now during Berlin Art Week. Distributed participatory artworks include UKENA (2020–), a wearable practice with a seven-layer authorship chain in which the wearer is named co-author by signing their name and three values inside the garment.
Underneath both studio registers runs a sustained twenty-year practice of building artistic infrastructure: Spielraum (Berlin, 2005), CRE8 Foundation (2011, founded after a four-month residency at Ramana's Garden Orphanage, Rishikesh; ran across 40+ countries until ~2018), Thaillywood Artist Residency (Thailand, Creative Director 2009–2011), AIR Open Artist Residency Ubud (downtown Ubud, 2013–present — 6 units, shared 300m² studio, communal meals), AIR Trancoso (Bahia, Brazil, 2018–2021, given away), AIR Temple (Desa Kenderan, 12 min from Ubud, 2020–present — 4 houses each with own studio, beside a thousand-year-old water temple and rice paddies), UKENA, I AM YOU (electronic music label co-founded with Deer Jade, 2024), UNFUCK YOUR CREATIVITY (book, 2024), and CINIS (2026). Selected exhibitions: Centre Pompidou Paris, Palais de Tokyo, Grand Palais (Paris Photo), Genezarethkirche Berlin (Church of Now), Funkhaus Berlin (Flowstate), Galeria Lume São Paulo, BAERCK Berlin, IKII Berlin, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC, with CRE8), Zona Maco Mexico City (2026).
The practice operates in the tradition of Joseph Beuys's erweiterter Kunstbegriff (the expanded concept of art), extending across studio, social form, garment, music, ritual, and pedagogy as one continuous artistic project. Financial autonomy through frame-building is treated by the artist as a structural prerequisite for honest practice, not as a side venture.
In August 2026, Ukena presented Salto a lo Desconocido at Nômade Temple, Ibiza. The exhibition ran from 15 to 31 August and brought together embroidered paintings and the film Jump Into The Unknown. It was presented within Sacred Sun · Total Eclipse, the programme he co-curated around the solar eclipse of 12 August.
Meisterschüler of Lothar Baumgarten
I make work in two directions, both held in one practice for twenty years.
The first direction is conceptual: a peace sign formed by twenty thousand toy soldiers, a wall of fifteen thousand nails that on one side hurts and on the other side spells trust, a barbed-wire rainbow, a sign pointing both ways that claims to be the one and only truth. Material precise. Punchline first, then the longer layers. Compressed teachings disguised as memes.
The second direction is intuitive. Since 2017 I draw with chalk on dark fabric in my studio in Bali. One line, then the next. Yes-and. No plan. No looking outside. The line is stitched by my studio team across translation delays I can't fully control, on reflective surfaces that shift every time the light or the viewer moves, in series long enough that finished pieces return to me as new information for pieces I haven't drawn yet. The work is the conversation. The studio team is part of the artwork itself.
These are not two phases. They are two ways of asking the same question: what happens when you set up a rule? Answered first one way (the rule guarantees the outcome) and then the other (the rule guarantees you won't know the outcome until it arrives). The early conceptual works knew where they were going. The textile work begins by surrendering that knowing. Both are forms of compression. Both leave the viewer room to complete the seeing.
Underneath both runs a third practice that took me twenty years to understand was also the work: the construction of frameworks. Spielraum in Berlin (2005). CRE8 Foundation (2011), which began as a four-month residency at Ramana's Garden Orphanage in Rishikesh and grew into seven years of workshops with children in over forty countries. AIR Open Artist Residency Ubud (2013) — six units, one shared 300m² studio, artists eat together. AIR Trancoso in Bahia (2018) — three years, then given away. AIR Temple in Desa Kenderan (2020) — four houses each with its own studio, beside a water temple and rice paddies, twelve minutes from Ubud, for the artists who need quiet. UKENA (2020), a wearable artwork with seven layers of authorship in which the wearer signs their name and three values inside the garment and is named co-author. I AM YOU (2024–), an electronic music label where the human hand-mark is made mandatory and visible. UNFUCK YOUR CREATIVITY (2024), twenty years of the methodology in one form. CINIS (2026), a wedding artwork that is also a contract.
The frameworks are not biography. They are how the work happens. They are also how I afford to make it without depending on the gallery system to tell me what to make next.
I am not here to tell you what to see, but to create a space where the seeing can be witnessed.
— Ole Ukena, 2026
Press
Reading the practice — orientation for journalists, curators, gallerists, and collectors.
For the long-form orientation, three position texts (Two Registers, One Hand, UKENA: A White Paper, Frames Manifesto) plus role-by-role guidance, see the canonical press primer. Below: practice in one paragraph + press contact.
Ole Ukena (b. 1983, Germany) is a Berlin-trained contemporary artist working across four object-modes, large-scale freehand embroidery on retroreflective fabric ("textile painting"), conceptual installation and editions, spatial work, and wearable artwork (UKENA), and at the institutional scale of seven registered artistic frames he founds and runs (Spielraum, CRE8 Foundation, AIR, UKENA, I AM YOU, UNFUCK YOUR CREATIVITY, CINIS). Lives and works between Bali and Berlin. UdK Berlin (2003–2009), Meisterschüler of Lothar Baumgarten; also attended, in parallel, Katharina Sieverding's Visual Culture Studies class, Hito Steyerl's class (guest professor 2007/08) and Daniel Richter's class. Major institutional placements: Centre Pompidou, Palais de Tokyo, Grand Palais Paris Photo, Genezarethkirche Berlin (permanent commission), Zona Maco Mexico City. In 2024, Jerry Saltz reposted Cher, Chair, Share (Hello Joseph) on Instagram captioned "I remade Joseph Kosuth's Chair", operationally completing the work.
Press kit
Position texts, high-resolution images, exhibition history, bio, and quotation rights:
- Download CV (PDF) — A4, 3 pages, May 2026 update
- Two Registers, One Hand — foundational position essay
- Studio page — manifesto + seven frames
- Exhibitions list — chronology with select institutional placements
- Press page — downloadable bio texts, high-res images, and press contact
- press@oleukena.com — image rights, quotation, and press kit on request