I’m a Swiss artist based in London with an MFA from Central Saint Martins. My multidisciplinary practice spans found materials, choreography, drawing, film, language, and sound—brought together in what I call sculptural plays.
I create temporary, alternative realities through collaboration, improvisation, and play, often staging absurd, theatrical scenarios that challenge our sense of what is real. My work is rooted in process rather than polished outcomes. I use task-based methods, game structures, and chance to navigate materials, places, and situations—embracing unpredictability, mistake, and limitation as creative tools.
There’s a deliberate haphazardness in what I do. I’m drawn to what I don’t yet know how to do—pushing toward new forms by disrupting old ones. The unconscious and cognitive activity often become the content itself, and I take pleasure in what I call an aesthetic of concurrence.
From 2014 to 2017, I developed HOUSERULES—a nomadic platform for spontaneous, cross-disciplinary experimentation. It brought together artists from diverse practices to activate specific spaces, culminating in performative exhibitions focused entirely on process. The works that emerged spanned dance, movement, film, installation, spoken word, sculpture, and sound—forming immersive, time-based experiences.
HOUSERULES has since evolved into käfig—a more focused yet still improvisational platform. Named for both its metaphorical structure and as a nod to John Cage, käfig explores live, unscripted sculptural plays composed in real time, without pre-existing narrative, using material improvisation and chance methods.
Key influences include Antonin Artaud, John Cage, and J. Krishnamurti, whose notion of freedom as a radical state of mind deeply resonates with my approach.
Key interests: Collaboration, improvisation, play, indeterminacy, theatricality, cross-disciplinary practice, interpretation, process-led creation, and alternative modes of art-making and education.
contact: nadiaberri2021@gmail.com
Selected Exhibitions and Projects:
2023
Responding to Richard Wood's installation at Siegfried Contemporary, London, artists Nadia Berri, Nicole Bachmann and Clément Courgeon transported audiences into their worlds of sound and movement.
2020
käfig for Co.Lab Sound curated by Marley Treolar for Fringe Arts Bath
2019
käfig for Testbed: Collaborate/kəˈlabəreɪt, Camden Arts Centre
2018
käfig, 19a Herald Street, London
käfig populating Jose Damasceno’s exhibition ‘Republica’, Thomas Dane Gallery, London
käfig, Deptford does Art, London
2017
HOUSERULES Under the E Cross Rte., under the E Cross Rte., London May 2017
HOUSERULES Hage, Rabih Hage Architect, Furniture Warehouse, London January 2017
2016
‘HOUSERULES Summer School’, July 2016, London
2015
‘HOUSERULES Folly’, Queen Caroline’s Temple Kensington Gardens, London
‘The Guided Tour’ HOUSERULES for Artlicks Weekend, London
de beauvoir residencies, hosted by HOUSERULES, London
2014
UNLOCKING THE DIARY curated by Eiko Honda, Folkestone
Fringe at The Grand, Folkestone, 30 August to 2 November, Folkestone
‘HOUSERULES’, 13 artists occupying the 20,000 sqf fifth floor of a deserted office building in East India Dock, London
2013
LUPA (20) FETE – last LUPA EVENT, London
LUPA15, 25 January 2013, LOCK UP PERFORMANCE ART - A
performance series curated by Aaron Williamson, Jordan McKenzie, Kate Mahony and Rachel Dowle 2011 – 2013, London
2012 51°29′35′′N 0°05′46′′W – Two Art Projects on Heygate and Pullen Estate, Elefest, London
SE1 Open Show, Bow Arts SE1 Project Space, Bermondsey, London
Repeat, Rewind, Rephrase, Latymer Projects, London
contact: nadiaberri2021@gmail.com