Uli Brahmst:

Imprinting The Witness

Artist Statement

What are they observing? How are they processing the world around them? And what are they asked to follow? 

While I am wrapped up in my daily life and all that collides around me, I am too often not asking myself how young people are seeing what I see? How what I experience translates to them as they observe from a different vantage point equipped with other memories and tools. One thing I am certain of is that they are watching and that they are impacted by the world we are creating for and with them, whether it is in our lives with family, friends, and community, or whether it reaches them through screens and algorithms.

I see us standing at the kitchen counter with the computer open following in crushing disbelief as January 6th plays out, the war in Ukraine starts, October 7th unfold, kids are being pulled from the rubble, as LA is burning, child abuse discourse is dominating the headlines, legal immigrants are getting arrested, kids separated from their parents to be contained in warehouses, demonstrators are shot in the street, and students and their teachers are killed in their schools. My child’s tears are streaming down her beautiful face and I feel painfully uncomfortable as I am still unprepared and ill-equipped to parent the shocking realities we are witnessing. 

Over time I have immersed myself in a body of work that tries to imagine how this world may look to somebody who is young, maybe still a child. Separation, loss, abuse, migration, wars, environmental threats, violence - whether lived or witnessed - are their daily bread together with parents’ expectations that they grow up to be “successful adults”. I ask myself, are we role modeling successful lives, showing them a promising path forward? Or, do we need to dig deeper, listen better, and imagine with our hearts wide open the world as they may see it, and how we can be more compassionate adults, better stewards of this world as we shape the way for their futures?

More About The Artist…

German born artist Uli Brahmst has been living and working in Germany, Canada, the Czech Republic and since 1996 in the United States, where she has made New York City and later Rhode Island her home. Brahmst’s spirited portfolio encompasses drawing, painting, ceramics, digital imagery, fiber art as well as site-specific installation. She moves freely between abstraction and the figure, the real and the imagined. Her versatile work is informed by the domestic as well as by current events, and focuses on the empathetic exploration of the human condition in contemporary life. 

Brahmst’s work has been shown extensively in the United States and around the world. In New York City she has exhibited in such venues as, Perogi, Lehman College Art Gallery, Rotunda Gallery, Cave Gallery, Cork Gallery Lincoln Center, Exit Art, Art Expo, The German Consulate, Pool Art Fair, the New Art Center and Galleria Galou. Rhode Island venues include the Newport Art Museum, Bannister Gallery, Jamestown Art Center, Providence Art Club, Bristol Art Museum, and Hera Gallery. Other national and international venues include Islip Museum, Islip, CT; the New Jersey Center For Visual Art; Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, WI; Tacoma Contemporary, Tacoma, WA; Museo De Bellas Artes, Caracas; CORP GROUP Cultural Center, Caracas; Nam June Paik Museum at Tae Gu Teback Gallery, Korea; 10th International Quilt Festival, Yokohama, Japan; ARWI Contemporary Art Fair, Puerto Rico; Galerie Radost, Prague; and Gallerie R31, Berlin. The artist is part of The Synergy Project of the Art League of RI. Brahmst’s  recent solo shows include: ON BEING A WOMAN, UMass Dartmouth Star Store Campus Gallery, MA, 2020, THE INTIMACY OF CARE  Hera Gallery/Educational Foundation, RI, 2021, HOLD ME, Hera Gallery/Educational Foundation, RI, 2023, GRAVITY OF THE EPHEMERAL, AS220 Project Space, RI, 2025.

Brahmst is a member of Hera Educational Foundation and Gallery, and an elected member of the Art League of Rhode Island.