Anna Berlin
“A black and white color scheme carries a sense of timelessness or history, but more than that, I think I am interested in the feeling of eternity at night time and the solid gray of an overcast sky.”
Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background?
I grew up in Montclair, New Jersey. Montclair is located just outside of NYC and growing up I was exposed to a strong DIY and art scene. I felt very encouraged creatively by my parents and friends. In middle school and high school I loved drawing and writing, but mostly I loved playing music and being in bands. When I got to college I began to focus more on painting.
I earned my BA from Mount Holyoke College and my MFA from Boston University. In both programs, I was fortunate to have amazing teachers and peers, giving me the opportunity to work with some of my favorite artists and thinkers.
At Mount Holyoke, I met one of my best friends, Ali Rossi, who started an exhibition platform called Olympia. It later became an artist-run space and is now a gallery on the Lower East Side of New York; the gallery currently represents my work. In 2021, I moved to Berlin, Germany, on a Fulbright Grant for research in painting. I’ve been living in Berlin ever since.
Your paintings bring together bureaucratic documents, legal forms, and everyday objects, turning them into a way of telling stories about history and identity. What interests you about using these materials, and how do they shape the way you think about personal and collective memory.
Before I moved to Germany, I never thought of paperwork playing such a large role in my life—but then I moved to Germany. I found myself overwhelmed with applications and documents that defined my purpose and my ability to exist. There was also a strange blurring, as my last name, Berlin, is the same as the city’s.
Soon after moving, I began applying for German citizenship through my paternal grandparents, who were German Jewish Holocaust survivors. An eerie connection emerged between some of their paperwork and my own. I became conscious of how certain documents had allowed them to flee and because my family still has these papers, they now enable me to apply for citizenship. Despite the frustrations, I appreciated the tangibility and legacy of paperwork. As paperwork started playing a larger role in my life, I became more aware of painting itself as a form of documentation.
I began to consider documentation as storytelling and storytelling as documentation—especially as a way to communicate memory and knowledge.
Wasser, 2023
Drawing 06, 2022
Drawing 08 2022
Your use of grayscale gives your paintings a document-like quality, making them feel both personal and official. What role does color—or the decision to leave it out—play in how you approach history and storytelling in your work?
In each group of paintings I think of setting up a world, and within that world a story. Making the work in black and white felt like such a clear color choice for painting whose universe existed within the flatness of a document.
The romantic painter in me also loves how color is light, and I’m drawn to painters like Hammershøi and Vermeer who use paint to depict specific light settings like sunlight through a window. I love the idea of physical paint on a brush symbolizing light from a window. I became interested in whether I could allude to certain light scenarios through a combination of symbols and flat areas of color.
A black and white color scheme carries a sense of timelessness or history, but more than that, I think I am interested in the feeling of eternity at night time and the solid gray of an overcast sky.
Your work often references migration and movement across generations. How do you think about time in your paintings—not just in terms of history, but in the way different moments, places, and records seem to exist at once?
I consciously moved to Berlin because of an interest in exploring my name through my family’s history. I honestly didn’t know if it was just superficial curiosity or something deeper, but I was interested in living in a place that contained the collision of past and present. In some ways, painting feels the same way: a physical space that blurs past and present together.
The blurring feeling began to further intensify as political events unfolded. As a Jew and a descendant of Holocaust survivors, it’s been sickening to watch Germany— especially post-October 7th—limit freedom of speech in the name of combating antisemitism. Meanwhile, these actions only fuel racism and perpetuate the genocide of the Palestinian people. Advocating for human rights isn’t antisemitic, and anti-Zionism and antisemitism are not the same.
More recently, several German political parties, for the first time since WWII, have begun working with the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) to push anti-immigrant agendas through parliament. Not to mention what’s happening in the U.S. and other countries—fascism is on the rise. All of this makes me think of my grandparents and their stories. Storytelling holds an important role in Judaism; when someone dies, you say, “Let their memory be a blessing.” Memories are kept alive through storytelling. My grandparents' stories feel as urgent now as ever.
Two Sisters, 2023
Anmeldung, 2023
The Vollendam, 2023
Tell us a bit about how you spend your day / studio routine? What is your studio like?
I have a two-room apartment in Berlin, and I use one of the rooms as my studio. It’s really quiet and has a big window that lets in a lot of natural light.
My day-to-day studio practice varies, but my overarching approach to developing a body of work has stayed pretty much the same. I usually begin by making a series of drawings, and from those, I start experimenting with materials on small paintings. Then I decide if any of the small paintings feel like they could evolve into larger works. At some point, there’s a moment when it feels like what I was trying to say has been said, and I find myself returning to drawing to think through new ideas.
Even though there’s this progression that feels like a hierarchy—drawings, then small works, then large works—I wouldn’t say the large works are always the most interesting to me. Sometimes I find myself going back to the drawings and realizing those pieces feel the strongest.
What artwork have you seen recently that has resonated with you?
Not a single artwork, but the Mary Sully exhibition at The Met in New York really resonated with me—it was such a quirky show! Sully worked in the early to mid-20th century and was unknown during her lifetime. Each piece consists of three separate, variously sized colored pencil and ink drawings within a single frame. It’s not quite outsider art and not quite typical modern art. The works were weird and funny, with forms that felt playful and sincere.
I think, in many ways, it’s easy to make work that’s sophisticated, trendy, or even smart and skilled. What’s hard is making something truly weird.
Is there anything new and exciting in the pipeline you would like to tell us about?
There are a few things I am looking forward to coming together. Most of all, there’s a tree outside my studio window, and I am really looking forward to spring. The tree makes buds, the buds become leaves, and then I can work with my windows open again.
All images courtesy of the artist
Interview publish date: 10/03/2025
Interview by Richard Starbuck
