Berenice Hernández

Berenice Hernández was born in Mexico City. She works with ceramic sculptures and installations that function as models of imaginary architecture.

In 2015, she moved from Mexico City to Sweden to continue her ceramic education at Leksand Folkhögskola. She received a BFA in ceramics from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO) and holds an MFA from Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm.

Her work has been shown in Mexico, Sweden, and Norway. Recent exhibitions include Assembled Absence at Berg Gallery, Stockholm; Measures of the Void at Norskbilledhoggerforening, Oslo; Alla de otroligt många tillstånd at Kaolin, Stockholm, Taco for two: performance during Stockholm Craft Week, Observations on the means to carry on at Galleri Format, Oslo, and the 8th Biennale of Ceramics at the Franz Mayer Museum, Mexico City.

In 2023, Hernández received a grant from the Anglo-Swedish Society for a residency at the Royal College of Art in London. Hernández is represented in the collections of KODE Art Museums of Bergen, Norway, Handelsbankens konstförening and Statens Konstråd, Stockholm, Sweden.

In her work, the act of constructing and deconstructing is fundamental. It starts with layers of clay that she methodically turns into large blocks. She then cuts the blocks into smaller pieces. Sometimes, the cuts are clean and precise; other times, they are crude, resulting in blocks that crumble into fragments. She then uses the blocks as a library of materials for her sculptures, ready to be used in a never-ending cycle of building, deconstruction and rebuilding.

An important part of her practice is the idea that solidity is illusory. Everything shifts. Her sculptures are as much about the cracks, the broken lines, and the flakes that fall off as they are about the structures themselves. For her, what is lost is as present as what remains. Her work then becomes an architecture of what was, what might have been, and what is.

Visit Berenice Hernández’s website and Instagram page.