Anna Bera is a multidisciplinary creative, sculptress and designer specializing in functional art using wood as her main medium. She was born in 1985 and raised in a small village in the Swietokrzyskie Mountains, Poland. In 2014 she launched her own design studio and workshop based in Warsaw dedicated to creating unique objects, crafted by hand from wood, with inspiration coming from Bera's observations of the relationship between humans and nature — from a biological, spiritual and cultural perspective. The artist focuses on the ways the objects are used and on their ritualistic significance in everyday life. She creates sculptural furniture and utility objects, the form of which does not reveal the functionality, instead encouraging the users to explore and give them their own meaning. Anna graduated from the Faculty of Architecture and Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan, she is a member of the Nów.New Craft Poland association, a lecturer at the School of Form in Warsaw and holds a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland. Her work has been exhibited in Poland, Europe, US and South-East Asia.
There’s a moment when something that hasn’t previously existed as a possibility comes about magically, as it were, because it happens unexpectedly and immediately, incontrovertibly, you might say. The appearance of that something isn’t the result of deliberations, of observation and ascertainment, but belongs under the category of yes-no. Existence-non-existence. And, as with something which was not, but is, what’s astonishing in the end is the obviousness of that something’s existence. Because that something comes about without my participation. This isn’t creating, but more a matter of watching as it emerges or rather as it simply is, because it doesn’t appear, it doesn’t emerge in time, there’s just nothing and then... something. Although, perhaps, even if there isn’t nothing, because there’s no impression of an empty space, the consciousness of the possibility of that something doesn’t exist.
Obscenely obvious things interest me.
I would like everything to be directly in view. For a composition to be obvious, for things to be at the central point, perhaps raised somehow, even elevated, uplifted, like standing on a peak.
One thing. Irrevocable. A step taken, uncompromising, a one-off. Without reasoning. Without explanations. Only things which have no need of explanations and descriptions. No hidden intentions whatsoever. The pleasure of leaving everything else. The entire surfeit.
I think about something potent, explicit, so much so that it is obscene, like it really is. You can touch it. It is heavy and if it were to fall on me, it would crush me to pulp. I wanted it to be like death; for instance, a stone is like death.
When you have exhausted all possibilities of placing things on the margin, then you should start placing in the middle.