Birgit Moffatt is a German multidisciplinary artist based in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Her work spans installation, sculpture and object-making using traditional and contemporary techniques. Her material-driven practice explores the intersection of culture, migration and places, which continually shape her sense of self and belonging.
Moffatt’s work is strongly inspired by her exposure to Māori culture, with its values and beliefs clearly reflected in her use of natural materials and processes. She approaches her work with a minimal aesthetic, reduced to reveal its essence.
Addressing her East German heritage, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the subsequent adaptation to a new political system have been a recurring themes in Moffatt’s past work. Her recent research has focused on the East German art movement of Socialist Realism, Kunst am Bau, as well as the architecture of the time.
During her three-month residency, Moffatt has explored combining elements from urban landscapes with natural materials. She used plaster as her material of choice, constructed into window - like forms.
These forms resemble the raw, sharp and unpolished aspects of her upbringing in the largest housing estate in East Berlin during the 1980s. Reviewing her childhood photographs during the residency, happy memories resurfaced, each image a gentle homage to that time. Together with natural materials of her current life in rural New Zealand, such as harakeke (NZ flax), natural dyes and rocks, they form a dialogue between two places and two lives.
