The story of Home ground
How I created my own wolfpack with strangers & passengers, by sharing my art in the most vulnerable way.
With a cub's eyeview I lay on an unknown landscape.
The cold caressed my snoot while the wind blew snowflakes in my face.
An echo of howls approached my ears (earcup/conch).
A pack of wolves ran towards me.
They howled whilst their fur danced in the wind.
They let the snow dissipate amidst the stars.
Underneath their legs there shone the calm northern lights.
This moment felt like my warm blanket.
Like a family, loving, protecting and caressing me.
When I woke up from that dream I only wanted one thing: to relive this intense experience again. It was a magical moment in which I seemed to be a part of everything and everything seemed to be a part of me.
Every human being naturally has primal communicative skills, which, as with dogs, were lost by domestication. With these primal skills we can create a communicative connection with ourselves and our environment using our sensory powers. I don't want to be a domesticated dog, I rather feel like a young, wild she-wolf who tries to rediscover these communication skills to connect beautifully with everything around her.
It is from this sense of interconnectedness I want to create an artistic movement in which I create my own pack, ever moving, ever growing through changing environments and situations, in which positioning occurs naturally.
With a palette of various materials I visit public places like city parks, woodlands or squares and consider these environments like a canvas in which I can paint my own landscapes. These landscapes function as a first way of communicating so that I can start an artistic movement through which the environment, it's citizens, myself and my work merge together in a moment of spontaneity, expression and adventure.
My art receives its meaning through so many distinctive elements, that it could never solely be captured in a painting. Rather it is a continuous movement, ever wanting to raise itself to the next level. And in this movement in which all contexts never stop changing, time will lead us to a natural positioning towards and in relation to everything.
I tend to call myself the alpha she-wolf, using artistic practice to lead her self-created pack members, other people and animals to a land where daily patterns and habits are transmuted to moments of attention, connection and a sense of wonder.
However, my 'wolfdream' merely induced my search for a loving connection.
I wore a glass wolfmask, now cracking open; a thousand shards cutting through my work.
Because of this, the practice has become it's own alpha, a huge independent entity, ever moving forward and shapeshifting.
Through an artistic movement I create my own environments, because I'm looking for a similar ultimate connection like the one from the 'wolfdream'. It's not about the idea of a pack, but rather about the unity which emerges from that movement in which I challenge myself to establish a connection between the audience and my work.
The story of back to the pack and the playing creature
A bridge between my artistic practice and my Sinti roots.
Morena’s artistic skills started when she was only a young Sinti-girl who was raised in a Sinti- settlement near Roermond in The Netherlands. For centuries gipsy’s like the Sinti’s are well known for their intuitive skills, close relations with mother-nature, their passionate music, fires, and romantic nomadic lifestyle. But unfortunately Sinti's and Roma were persecuted and banned for centuries because of their exotic looks and traditional nomadic lifestyle. During the second Worldwar half a‘milion Sinti and Roma were deported and brutally killed. And this left a huge scar on the entire community. Morena never talked about this ancestral scar in public, she either wants to transform these scars by creating art with her intuitive skills and spiritual insides.
In 2017 she created two beautiful movies about her roots where she invited her family into her artistic world by a series of performances. It was a difficult task for her to create these movies, because she recently broke up with her family and she had to overwin ancestral patterns of shame, fear and even guild. But eventualy these movies were creating a lovely en authentic bridge between her artistic practice and her roots. 'It was the most healing artwork I've ever made.'
’My family is a huge source of inspiration for me because they don’t believe in a clock that wakes you up to go to school or to work. They measure the value of time with an inner compass: A free heart’’. When I create art with a heart like this I can capture the mystical spheres and messages of my spiritual adventures very accurately. In order to share them with the world''
Morena Bamberger