Magdalena Kallenberger is an artist, writer, and researcher.
She works with video, photography, performance, installation, and text, combining research into feminist histories and writing with autobiography, theory and performative elements. Kallenberger’s research-based and often collaborative practice investigates themes around resistance, radical care and feminist practices tackling the in_visibility of care/work and motherhood(s) not just in the Arts.
Kallenberger studied at the University of the Arts Berlin (Diplom/MFA and Meisterschüler Degree in Media Art) and the Willem de Kooning Academy / Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Since 2019, Kallenberger is a Ph.D. Candidate at Bauhaus University Weimar. Her practice-based Ph.D. explores autotheory and collective art production as knowledge-building practices within the context of artistic research.
Kallenberger received several awards and grants, including Deutscher Künstlerbund, Gwärtler Foundation, Elsa-Neumann-Scholarship/NaFöG, Forum Transregionale Studien, M1 Arthur Boskamp Stiftung, Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung and currently holds a doctoral fellowship at the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation.
Residencies include several long-term stays in Tehran, Iran (2007, 2008/09) and London, UK (2008) as part of DAAD Scholarships, as well as mini-residencies in Palermo, Sicily (2023, 2024, 2025), Neu-Holland, Brandenburg (2023), DOK15518/Haus des Wandels (2022), Libken (2019), PALA LAB (2018), etc.
Kallenberger has presented her artistic works nationally and internationally in numerous exhibitions and festivals, most recently at Wilhelm-Hack Museum (2025), Kunsthalle Bremen (2025), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (2025) Múzeum Ludwig, Budapest, Hungary (2023), Galerie Arsenal, Bialystok, Poland (2023), Kulturkirche Bremerhaven (2023), The Museum of Memory and Human Rights, Santiago de Chile (2022), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (2023, 2022, 2020) Berlin, LA artcore (2022), Times Art Center Berlin (2021), Museum Ostwall Dortmund (2021), Performance Art Bergen (2021), Spill Festival of Performance (2021), Reading Assembly: Care (2021), Württembergischer Kunstverein (2021), Los Angeles Film Forum (2020), Ipswich UK, “Who Cares?“ Feminist Art Festival (2020), Rencontres de Bamako – African Biennale of Photography (2018), Cairotronica – festival of Electronic and New Media arts (2017) in Cairo, CIC Contemporary Image Collective (2016), Cairo Egypt, Fak‘ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival, Johannesburg (2017), South Africa and alpha nova galerie futura (2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019), nGbK Berlin, n.b.k. Berlin. Camera Austria Graz, Short Film Festival Oberhausen, among many others.
Between 2010 and 2017, she taught full-time as a lecturer and Professor of Practice Time-Based Media at the American University in Cairo and the German University in Cairo, Egypt. Since 2018, she has been a lecturer at the University of the Arts Berlin, the Berlin International University of Applied Sciences, and the Inter-University Center for Dance Berlin and has held various workshops and lectures nationally and internationally.
Kallenberger’s most recent articles and essays appeared in publications with MIT Press (2023), K-Verlag (2023), demeter press (2023) and gender(ed) thoughts (2023). She has co-edited “Re-Assembling Motherhood(s): On Radical Care and Collective Art as Feminist Practices” by MATERNAL FANTASIES, published with onomatopee in 2021, second edition in 2022. Available via onomatopee https://www.onomatopee.net/exhibition/re-assembling-motherhoods/
Magdalena Kallenberger is an initiator, co-founder, and active member of MATERNAL FANTASIES collective and CAIRO BATS