About Marjorie Chau
Marjorie Chau (Santiago, Chile, 1979) is a Chilean contemporary artist based in Berlin since 2002. Her practice focuses on creating immersive and performative environments that, through light, textiles, video, sound, and sculptural costumes, give shape to dreamlike worlds where the body becomes a space of memory, perception, and transformation.
Her artistic research explores the possibility of rebuilding connections that have been interrupted: between human beings and nature, between the body and memory, between childhood and adult life, between the observer and the observed, and between violence and justice. Through immersive installations, performances, and participatory interventions, she transforms light, movement, and technology into a poetic language capable of turning memory into a living experience, inviting us to remember, reconnect, and inhabit the present with a new awareness.
She studied art, theatre, and performance in Santiago, Chile, while also developing research into stage costume, which continues to be one of the pillars of her artistic practice. In 2001, she was invited by the Antagon Theater in Frankfurt am Main, beginning an artistic path in Germany that led her to settle in Berlin one year later.
Between 2002 and 2008, she worked closely with Japanese choreographer Minako Seki, one of the leading figures of contemporary Butoh in Europe. During those years, she took part in research, creation, and performance processes that deepened her work on the body, presence, movement, and perception. Together with Minako Seki, she participated in large-scale stage productions presented at institutions such as the Neue Nationalgalerie and Schloss Bellevue, the official residence of the Federal President of Germany, as well as in projects for the Eurovision Song Contest and other international productions. This period had a profound influence on the development of her artistic language and continues to be a fundamental influence on her practice.
At the same time, she founded her own company, through which she developed large-scale interdisciplinary productions for cultural institutions and international events over several years, strengthening her experience in artistic direction, sculptural costume, and stage creation. With these productions, she received first and second prize at Berlin’s Karnival der Kulturen in 2008 and 2010.
From 2012 onward, she began to focus on a more personal and independent artistic practice, developing her own language in which immersive installation, video mapping, light, sound, textile sculpture, and audience participation come together in a single sensory experience.
Her work has been presented internationally in museums, festivals, and institutions including NordArt (Büdelsdorf), Luminale (Frankfurt), Berlin Leuchtet, Potsdamer Lichtspektakel, Engel & Angeli (Bolzano), BAAM Berlin, and the StilZ Festival (Italy). Alongside her artistic practice, she develops art mediation and sustainability projects in collaboration with cultural institutions in Berlin, including the Humboldt Forum (Berlin) and Stadtmuseum Berlin.
For more than two decades, she has developed an artistic research practice in which memory, perception, and the body enter into dialogue with nature, ancestral worldviews, and contemporary technologies. Her works do not seek to represent the past, but to activate experiences that allow us to remember it, give it new meaning, and bring it into the present.
Artist Profile
| Based | Berlin, Germany |
|---|---|
| Born | Chile |
| Practice | Immersive installation, performance and contemporary textile art |
| Research | Mythology, memory, ecology and social transformation |
| Selected media | Textile, light, video, sound, interactive technology and sculptural costume |
| Selected institutions | Humboldt Forum, Stadtmuseum Berlin, NordArt, Luminale, Kühlhaus Berlin |
Selected milestones
Humboldt Forum and Stadtmuseum Berlin, 2025
Artistic mediation and sustainability-focused cultural programmes.Performing Art, Colosseum Kino, Berlin, 2024
Video-mapping installation.Kühlhaus Berlin, 2022
Participation in the multidisciplinary project Painting Schubert.NordArt and Luminale, 2016
Presentation of large-scale installation and light-based work within international exhibition contexts.Berlin, since 2002
Development of an artistic practice connecting Latin American memory with Berlin’s contemporary art context.
Artist Resources
Biography, artist statement, CV, selected project dossiers and press materials are available below.