Jasmin Werner

Biography

Jasmin Werner (born 1987 in Troisdorf, Germany) is a German-Filipino artist based in Berlin whose sculptural and installation-based practice examines architectures of power, objects of status, and the often invisible structures that keep systems of production and consumption running. Combining personal family narrative with research into transnational labor and colonial history, she creates works that trace how materials, bodies, and technologies move across borders. Werner began her studies in photography at the HfG Karlsruhe before completing her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam in 2012, later continuing her training as a meisterschuelerin. Her installations often repurpose everyday objects, such as scaffolding systems, mobile phones, and consumer goods, recasting them as symbols of global economic and social hierarchies; in one notable work she replaced smartphones with wooden replicas hand-carved and painted by Filipino artisans, drawing attention to outsourced labor and craft. Her work has been exhibited at institutions and galleries including Galerie Guido W. Baudach, Kunsthal Viborg, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Westfälischer Kunstverein, and the Schinkel Pavillon, and she has participated in residencies including the Goethe-Institut and Residence NRW+. Werner has also engaged in academic and pedagogical work connected to HFBK Hamburg, further extending her research on power structures into critical writing and teaching. She continues to develop participatory and collaborative projects that use art to foster dialogue between communities affected by histories of trade, migration, and industrial production.