Lena Braun

Braun processes the photos taken during performances into prints and collages. Her works have been exhibited both in Germany and abroad. In 2020, they were shown in the U.S., alongside works by Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and as part of the exhibition "The Art of Djuna Barnes." The genres of collage and installation remain central to Braun's work today, with a wide range of materials including found objects of all kinds.

Since 2019, Lena Braun has been producing woven objects and concrete sculptures. For her, the 100th anniversary of the German art school Bauhaus was an invitation to suspend its gender code - concrete for men, weaving for women – by working in both media. The genre of collage also plays a central role here: Braun's woven objects often collage textile with non-textile materials. Her concrete casts immortalize found objects in sculptural works that turn into a kind of time capsule.

In 2017, she created an installation of discarded ball gowns from the Vienna Opera Ball, that was shown in Berlin in 2017 and at the art festival open art Lausitz in South Brandenburg in 2021.

In 2013, Lena Braun published three novels in homage to Djuna Barnes: Ladies Almanach, Nachtschatten, Tyler. The titles echo those chosen by Barnes: Ladies Almanack, Nightwood, Ryder. Braun's novels tell stories that reflect and rewrite the ones Barnes told: For example, Braun's Ladies Almanach transposes the lesbian circle in Paris that Barnes portrayed in 1928 to Berlin in the 1990s. Braun's homage also simulates the editorial gesture: Like Barnes, who published her Almanack as a private print, Braun self-published her novels, founding the literary label EDITION FortyFour for this purpose.

In 2007, she wrote and directed the video “Hairspray II", based on the Film Hairspray by John Waters (director). Braun also played the role of "Mom". The video was shown in Amsterdam in 2010 and in Berlin in 2021

Braun appeared in several films, among them Gender X, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2005 and B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979-1989, which was released in 2015.

Braun performed in Robyn Orlin's play “Ski-fi-Jenni”, with performances in Montpellier, Paris and Berlin (2002).

Braun was a voice actress in Nekromantik 2, and she co-wrote and co-directed a film for German television (“Der hellblaue Engel”, The Light-Blue Angel, 1996).

In 1993, she founded the Queen Barbie Lodge, defined as an “underground organization” for women artists. The lodge, which Braun chaired until 2009, was the female counterpart to an all-male association called Lord Jim Lodge, operated by artists like Martin Kippenberger and Albert Oehlen (among others). The Queen Barbie Lodge regularly organized exhibitions and performances ironizing sexism and championing female empowerment. The Berlin city magazine Tip wrote: “Lena Braun aka Queen Barbie is not only a curator, but also a visual artist and above all an intrepid performer. As a curator, she … mainly promotes and exhibits female artists, without being dogmatic about it.”

Alongside her curatorial projects, Lena Braun also works as a freelance author and artist. In the 1990s and 2000s, she wrote plays, acted in films and published a periodical for the Queen Barbie Lodge (36 issues, Xerox art). In 2013 she founded a literary label called Edition Fortyfour, where she publishes her novels. Braun's artistic oeuvre includes performances, collages and installations. She exhibits both in Germany and internationally.

In 1988, she opened the first of her – to this day - 9 art spaces in Berlin. The art magazine Kunstforum International called it a "meeting place for the young, experimental art scene" and Braun soon made a name for herself as "a real diva of Berlin's cultural scene". One of her art spaces, the Boudoir in Berlin-Mitte (1991 – 1995), was honored by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York with the exhibition “Boudoir in Exile and is now considered the “First Queer Art Salon” in Berlin.

Lena Braun has been initiating and curating art spaces in Berlin since 1988. She sees her spaces as installations, i.e. artificial environments that stage art (as opposed to showing it in a white cube). For an exhibition on "Today's Avant-Garde" at the Kindl Center for Contemporary Art in Berlin (2017) Braun created an installation that reflects her point of view: "My art spaces are campy environments that shape alternative queer lifestyles and suspend classic markers of social exclusion such as age, origin, or saleability."

Braun grew up in western Germany and came to Berlin in 1981 to study at FU Free University. In 1987, she wrote her master's thesis on the novel "The Tigress: A Strange Love Story" by Walter Serner.

Lena Braun (born 4 April 1961 in Wuppertal, Germany) is a Berlin-based artist, curator and author. She works as a cross-genre artist in the fields of performance and visual arts, often addressing non-normative femininity and gender expression. The art spaces that she has curated since 1988 have earned her the reputation of being a "Grand Dame" of Berlin's art scene.