Jaya Suberg
Germany
The Artist by Jana M. Noritsch
Lost in Paradise
Collecting images, of characters as well as pictorial prints of the most diverse origins, has always been a passion of the multi-layered artist Jaya Suberg. In her photographs, Jaya first captures the individual traits of her protagonists: Spotting women on the beach or on the street, she elicits their auratic selves in the shoot, lifts hidden things like a treasure, liberates them in their own expressions and body perceptions. They are all marked by life - and yet beautiful. One more blessed, the other more combative..., not perfect in the journalistic sense, but all the more precious because they pretend to be nothing other than themselves.
In her studio, Jaya then weaves these facets of the experienced into her lively, questioning impetus, her unmistakable visual language, which at the same time gives us viewers so much freedom. Anyone who looks at the artist's oeuvre notices a now clearer style, a more rebellious colourfulness in the poetically collaged transfers into ever new contexts. Preserved fragments of our past in the form of letters, antiquarian books and newspaper cuttings are composed by Jaya's settings with acrylic, pastel, pencils and chalk into powerful fields of tension.
At a time when we have sound-speed-piercing jets, live consumer compulsions and new attention capitalism, plan urban vertical densities, our perception system has been completely changed by the internet and we are confronted with invisible wars, the artist raises her voice. Who owns the world's drinking water? How do we deal with the progressive destruction of the environment? With strophantine, Monsanto or chemtrails? What ways do we go about saving ourselves, but at the same time the world, nature and society? "Lost in Paradise?"
Jaya Suberg was one of the first „digital Art“ artists, these roots and her signature are still unmistakable. Each work is unique, an aesthetic synopsis of diverse cultures, evidence of her perception and her personal sign to the world. She is a child of the seventies and eighties, filled with many journeys and diverse companions, peace movements and the spirit of Berlin, the city of the Wall. The love of life and all that is human, beauty in all its diversity, also promotes an awareness of transience, vanitas, and a certain heaviness, gravitas, in her pictorial works.
Jana M.Noritsch
"La Circle" - Jaya Suberg
Photography / Mixed Media
©Jaya Suberg all rights reserved
This is my Life
“I was born in Hagen in 1956 and have lived since 1980 in Berlin, the first 9 years surrounded by the wall…this was the most inspiring time in Berlin for me, because here it was a melting pot of people who wanted to live a life somehow free and independent, not this pedestrian life… We had another kind of dream, not to be in a family, with nice kids, and a cool car…I have worked as an artist exclusively for the past 13 years and spend my winters in southern climes. This year, for the 5th time I was on La Gomera, one of the Canary Islands.
Central to my artistic expression is the human being caught between his inner world and his outside world. In my works are melting imaginations, feelings, dreams and the “reality” of a single instantaneous impression. Most of my works show an intense human experience or situation. I am more interested in the feelings of mankind under the surface, feelings which we don’t like to feel, but we carry with us deep inside…some more, some less!.. All is inside-out, all is outside-in.
The “mysterious states, ineffable longing, the elusive and incomprehensible” are the themes which most inspire me and are come across clearly in my largely surreal works.
Also I understand my work as a mirror of present social conditions. My works are highly emotional. Feeling everything, transforming it and letting it all go again. Death is for me a very mysterious phenomenon, with all kinds of associated scary feelings. But I nonetheless will face it, always aware that life is precious and must end some day… This refers to my own process as an individual and at the same time to the development of cultural means of mourning and grieving all around the world.
I use my own photographs: I make a connection with people, mostly women on the street, on events, on the beach, in the city, all of whom attract me… My models are multi-cultural, they are all beautiful “people of the World” - that’s also why I love Berlin and La Gomera so much, there is such an incredible mixture of nations living together…I meet them for a special shoot somewhere... I have no studio for shoots... I make photos from *everything*, walls, graffiti, floors, and so on… I use also my mixed media works, drawings, and manual collages.
When I am at the computer, I open some folders and start spontaneously, I have no plan…and all works develop from moment to moment. Then I am on a trip somehow, and dive into another world, without thinking too much…and just let it happen…
I started when I came to Berlin, with a diary-collage book…first with photos and personal things, and later manual collages with GEO photos…I needed to express myself just as much as I need air to breath. It helped me to transform pain and desperation. I didn’t study ART and had no idea that to be an artist would ultimately become my calling…Living in divided Berlin was and still is a blessing! From it I drew so much inspiration!... When I had my first digital camera, I started working with easy digital software. Later I honed my technique by taking lessons with a graphic designer.
Before I was painting too, and visited many workshops, but I found a method in digital works and also in my mixed-media works to bring all my passions together: photography, painting, drawing, collages, and so much more…
This is my life and I love it….”
J.S. - 2013
for Arte Fotographica International Magazine, curated by Thierry Gulian
"Analyse 1" - Jaya Suberg
Photography / Mixed Media
©Jaya Suberg all rights reserved
Jaya by herself
"Schaumbad" - Jaya Suberg
Photography / Mixed Media
©Jaya Suberg all rights reserved
"Japine" - Jaya Suberg
Photography / Mixed Media
©Jaya Suberg all rights reserved
A Word by The ONE Museum Curator
Preparing an exhibition with Jaya has something really unique because it is certainly not like with any other artist. In the 30 or so years that I've been seeing and working with artists, I can assure you that I've seen some of them in all their colours, some really not sad at all, it can even border on burlesque and others really sad as they are so distressing because of an oversized ego, "kingsize" demands that one wouldn't even dare suspect, I could go on and on and on and on...
With Jaya, whom I have known for almost 9 years now, it is very different... so different!, because in fact, it is only love, pure kindness, a certain bliss and almost, dare I say it, candour.
Oh, don't be mistaken, Jaya knows what she wants, she is determined for the causes she defends, for a certain model of life and above all she is a great professional in her artistic work.But this is by no means what we are used to seeing. In fact, Jaya is far too invested in her work to dwell on things that do not interest her directly, on wasting time in relation to the essential values of her life, her creative work and her encounters with people.
So don't expect snoring CVs, convoluted or overrated biographies, for her everything is said in and through her work, in her friendly conversations with the people she meets and loves.In fact, for her the rest is of little importance. She is ready to give you everything she has, just like that out of friendship, out of love, but what she doesn't have, what she really doesn't want to have, what makes her lose precious time for her creations, those inessential things, you will be able to wait for them indefinitely because it's all too futile. A website? what for? apart from wasting time, she has her Facebook page on which she generously shares her creations with her heart, and that's enough. No, Jaya concentrates on the essentials and it is true that for an artist, creation alone should take precedence over all other commercial considerations.
So here they are, a few texts that a friend of Jaya's, Jana Noritsch, has kindly written to her over the years, a text that Jaya was kind enough to write for me eight years ago when I accepted the artistic direction of a Portuguese photography magazine to re-found it, and that I wanted Jaya to be one of the very first to share this adventure (crazy, in every sense of the word!).) by proposing a portfolio of her creations of the time, and these few lines... you won't have much else to read, but it doesn't matter in the end because you have the best, the works of Jaya that will speak to you.
I really fell in love with Jaya's art when I discovered it, it was beautiful, no, it was sublime, at once strong and full of feeling, delicate but also abruptly thrown, there was that touch of romanticism (some may dispute my interpretation), there was this infinite poetry, delicate but meaningful, no mawkishness, pure feeling and so much grace even in the depths of the blacks of perdition than on the sharp edge of the crisp reds. There was also proof of the lived experience and benevolent understanding of the other. You can see at once that her models have this fusion with the artist, that magic works, that they understand each other, no doubt because Jaya is too respectful to judge, but knows how to listen, to understand, to unseal what is touching in the person, what is beautiful in body and mind.
We haven't met for 9 years now. We don't speak to each other every day and yet, when a message arrives, there is always the same joy of speaking to each other again, as if last year had been yesterday, as if we were finally going to meet tomorrow. There is this trust that I believe is mutual and constant.
It is therefore with the greatest pleasure that The ONE Museum welcomes our friend, Jaya, to its doors wide open for this exhibition "Women AND Artists! "whose title defines Jaya so well, she could not fail to be present. Present, she will be even more present next year, in 2022, on the occasion of a very large monographic exhibition which will be entirely devoted to her on more than 2000m2, I am very keen on it and await this moment with great impatience, it will be nothing but happiness, as every time she enchants my eyes with her creations of immense talent and my heart, with her great humanity, her spontaneity and her continuous kindness.
I would like to thank you Jaya because I know that the conditions were difficult for you this time, but I know that once again you have given everything... really a huge THANK YOU, my Friend!
Thierry Gulian
Curator at The ONE Museum
"6 Red Nice" - Jaya Suberg
Photography / Mixed Media
©Jaya Suberg all rights reserved
"Polka" - Jaya Suberg
Photography / Mixed Media
©Jaya Suberg all rights reserved
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Jun 2016: „destinasia” Group Show, Stephen Romano Gallery, New York/USA
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Feb 2016: Duo-Show Galerie Uterstedt, Berlin
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Dez 2015: „Flux“ Group Show, Royal Halls of Kensington, London/UK
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Nov 2015: Art meets Interior, Studio Reiter (represented by Velvenoir/CCB), Altenmarkt, AT
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Okt 2015: Group Show Galerie the cave, Paris/FR
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Sep 2015: Berliner Liste Artfair, Berlin
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Sep 2015: Group Show Tokio-Berlin Orangerie Schloß Charlottenburg, Berlin
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Aug 2015: „Metamorphoses Galerie De Bakjeri, Bergen/NL
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Jul 2015: Soloshow „Hinter meiner Haut“, Galerie Display, Köln
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Jul 2015: *viva con agua* Millerntor Gallery, Hamburg
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Jun 2015: Group Show, StudioUrbana-Via Urban, Rom/IT
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Mai 2015: „happysad“ Glaube Liebe Hoffnung, Bonn-Bad Godesberg
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Okt 2014: Kubo Show Herne
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Sep 2014: Berliner Liste Artfair
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Sep 2014: Collectors Club Berlin, Kunstbuchprojekt (G), David Chipperfield Architects, Berlin
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Nov 2013: RoomARtfair Madrid/ES
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Okt 2013: Kubo Show, Herne
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Sep 2013: Berliner Liste Artfair
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Sept 2013: 6ª Muestra Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo "ENTRESILOS 2013" Museum Toledo, ES
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Mrz 2013: Group Show Afk Galerie, Lissabon/P
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Feb 2013: Artfair Brüssel (represented by industrialART)
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Feb 2013: Group Show, Centro de la Cultura, La Gomera, ES
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Okt 2012: Kubo Show *101 young artists*, Herne
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Okt 2012: ART Verona (represented by Galerie IndustrialART), IT
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Okt 2012: Solo Show: *inside out*, Galerie Zaar, Bochum
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Mrz 2012: *von Menschen, Reisen & stillen Momenten*, Casa de la Cultura, La Gomera, ES
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2011: Kubo Show, Herne
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2011: Group Show „Centro de la Cultura“ / La Gomera
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2010: Baseler Kunsttage (represented by Galerie DEN), CH
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2010: Group Show Galerie *the invisible dog*, New York, USA
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2010: Solo Show FotoART Frauenkulturzentrum *unlimited*, Berlin
Some Exhibitions…
