Vanessa Hafenbrädl

Vanessa Hafenbrädl (born 5 December 1979) is a German light artist who creates immersive installations using video mapping, glass art, music, and poetry. Her works often question social norms, human archetypes, and role models. Hafenbrädl has been a member of the German Artists' Association since 2012. Hafenbrädl was awarded the Tassilo Award in 2023 for her poetic visual narratives.

Life and work Hafenbrädl was born on 5 December 1979 and grew up in Gräfelfing, a municipality to the west of Munich. Her career began in theater, where she established herself as an object, pyrotechnics, and video technician. Her work took her to renowned stages, from the Thalia Theater in Hamburg to the Residenztheater and the Münchner Kammerspiele to alternative venues such as the , , Rote Fabrik in Zurich, as well as and Fusion Festival Lärz. She has also performed internationally with the Aktionstheater Panoptikum. In order to combine her technical expertise with artistic vision, she studied "Digital Film and Animation" at the SAE Institute in Hamburg from 2011 to 2013.

She sees her artistic work as a dialogue between history and modern technology. Her video mapping projects have been featured at international festivals, from the Luminale in Frankfurt to the Lichtkunst Biennale Evi Lichtungen in Hildesheim, the List í Ljósi in Iceland, the Illuminus Festival in the USA, and the Lux Light Festival in New Zealand. from her own family history, in which women suffered similar fates due to imposed moral concepts. The mirrors used in the installation are made of traditionally mouth-blown genuine antique glass from the Glasfabrik Lamberts, which adds an additional historical layer to the project. Another project, Wild things, is dedicated to the story of Jella Lepman, the founder of the International Youth Library in Blutenburg Castle. The Festival of Lights commemorates the Leipzig Monday demonstrations in East Germany of October 9, 1989, which are considered to have been the decisive impetus for the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.

Above the heads of thousands of visitors a large fabric banner was blown in the wind, onto which video images were projected. The installation created space for female voices and narratives – both historical and contemporary – and addressed the themes of freedom, femininity, and emancipation. Texts by Christa Wolf, Stefanie-Lahya Aukongo, Angelika Nguyen, and Gabriele Stötzer were heard, selected in collaboration with and the Christa Wolf Society. The text by Angelika Nguyen is taken from her documentary film Bruderland ist abgebrannt (1991). Anna McCarthy, Manuela Ritz, and Sandra Juds performed the acting, and McCarthy was also responsible for the sound design. The project was supported by philosopher Karin Aleksander, board member of the Christa Wolf Society and employee at the Center for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies at Humboldt University of Berlin; the material was provided by Nani Weixler.

The installation was accompanied musically by, among other things, the song Ermutigung by Haiyti with the original version of the lyrics by Wolf Biermann.

In 2026, her installation Glasstides was nominated in the Mapping on Object category at the Video Mapping Awards in Lille, France.

Glasstides In 2025, Hafenbrädl created the installation Glasstides, which was first shown as part of the exhibition "Land.schafft.Klang" (Land.creates.Sound) by the Art and Nature Foundation in Nantesbuch. The work combines glass art with video mapping and brings optical illusions on static objects to life. The installation shows a mountain of 128 broken glass panes. The rough and broken material symbolizes the immediacy and urgency of the climate crisis and the associated climate migration.

The work encourages reflection on questions of the habitability of places, the transformation of European landscapes, and the mixing of cultures. It reflects on human tradition in the face of nature's great cycles and invites us to surrender to the eternal rhythm of the tides.

The installation was funded by the Cultural Renewal Foundation and the Alexander Tutsek Foundation. The musical composition is by Andi Stecher (production, mixing, mastering) and Muezzo, whose alphorn polyphony was composed by Balthasar Streiff.

Your Scapes In her work Your Scapes, Hafenbrädl combines video projection, handmade mirror glass, and ecopoetry to create an installation that addresses the deep roots of human existence in water. The installation consists of two projectors that project the audio waveform from two sides onto a hand-blown mirror glass cylinder. The resulting reflections fill the entire room in a 360-degree experience.

In this work, Hafenbrädl takes on the artistic challenge of conveying the urgency of climate change without losing poetic expression. To this end, she collaborated with artists who specialize in eco-poetry, including poet Craig Santos Perez and author Steinunn Sigurðardóttir. The acoustic layer was created using music by Roel Funcken and ambient sounds from Marc Chouarain's Cristal Baschet. Recordings by sea rescuers from the MS Iuventa and Anna McCarthy were also incorporated into the work.

Angel in the House A central and long-term work is the installation Angel in the House. The title refers to the concept of the "angel in the house" coined by Virginia Woolf, which describes the idealized, selfless woman of the 19th century. In this work, Hafenbrädl explores the family history of the Hafenbrädl glassworks owners in the Bavarian Forest and questions the associated female gender roles.

Family history The Hafenbrädl family was a glassblowing dynasty that specialized in the production of handmade mirrors, which were known for their exceptional height and width.

The origin of the family name goes back to an 18th-century tradition in Frauenau in the Bavarian Forest. According to legend, the family patriarch Georg Hafenbrädl was found as a foundling in the "Glashafen" on the Bavarian river Regen, abandoned on a wooden board. He was given the name "Hafenbrädl," under which he later ran a successful glassworks and established the family tradition.

Exhibitions (selection) Solo exhibitions 2021: Spiegel im Spiegel (video installation), Studio Rose, Schondorf am Ammersee, Germany 2022: Angel in the house (video installation), Ludwigsthal Castle and Church, Germany 2022: Geisterbesetzung - Lichtkunstspaziergang (Ghost Casting - Light Art Walk) (video mapping & sound collage), Künstlerhaus Gasteiger, Utting am Ammersee, Germany 2022: Buronale and "Kaufbeuren leuchtet" present: Vanessa Hafenbrädl – KB WIRWIRWIR, City Museum Kaufbeuren 2023: Wild Things – The Key, video installation about Jella Lepman at the Blutenburg International Children's and Youth Library, Munich 2025: Glasstides, (installation) Art and Nature Foundation, Langes Haus (Nantesbuch), Bad Heilbrunn 2025: DAS WORT - Resistance is not futile (Installation) Your Scapes and Glasstides in the Buxheim choir stalls and the Buxheim Charterhouse, Germany 2025: Glasstides, St. Anna (Romenthal), Germany 2025: Dyad (video installation), Taubenturm, Monastery Dießen am Ammersee 2025: Francis Preaches to the Birds (video installation), St. John the Baptist, Peißenberg

Group exhibitions 2016: List í ljósi lightart festival – Seyðisfjörður, Iceland 2018: 2nd Weilheim Light Art Festival, Germany 2018: Antipode – Hydroshield Projection (video installation) "Lux Light Festival" Wellington 2018: Erlinde – Hydroshield Projection "Lux Light Festival" in Wellington, New Zealand 2021: Zugspitze in Glass at The Glass – Meet the Future 2021 Film Festival in Lybster, Scotland 2021: Mise en abyme – Der Spiegel im Spiegel (video installation), Transformations, Schlehdorf Abbey, Schlehdorf 2022: HI – touched (video projection), Evilichtungen – Artificiality and Nature Edition 2022, Hildesheim 2024: Spiegelgedicht (mirror poem) (video/mirror object), < 10 percent commissioned by the city of Pforzheim for the junge Galerie Pforzheim 2024: Your Scapes – Regina (360°/audio/video/glass), Relight Festival, Regensburg 2025: Glasstides (installation) "Goldstücke. Light – Art – Projects Gelsenkirchen," Gelsenkirchen 2025: No Flag, Leipzig Festival of Lights 2026: USHIS – No Flag. Just Fire. (video installation), Zamma-Festival, Unterschleißheim (Cooperation with the Forum Unterschleißheim Alliance for Democracy and Diversity) 2026: No Flag, Relight – Festival in Regensburg, Germany 2026: Glasstides (Installation), Blik Blik Festival - kostel Nanebevzetí Panny Marie in Plzeň, Czech Republic

Performances/Concerts 2016: Light tunnel performance for Anna McCarthy at Wiedemann Sanatorium, Ambach

Stage works 2017: Lilja 4-ever (video), Director: Anja Sczilinski, Residence Theatre Munich 2024: Reset. Everything breathes! (video), Ufo, Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Düsseldorf 2025: Discofox im Dachsbau (video), directed by Elle-Kollektiv, starring Lara Paschke and Luis Lüps, music by Jakob Lakner, Stadttheater Landsberg

Awards 2016: Winner of the Genius Loci Weimar 2026: Nominated, Video Mapping Awards (Lille, France) in the Mapping on Object category for her installation Glasstides.

Miscellaneous Vanessa Hafenbrädl has lived in Dießen am Ammersee since 2015. Almost like magic – Video artist Vanessa Hafenbrädl brings paintings to life Series: Strong women, bold ideas, wild lives., Portrait written by Katja Sebald in SeeMagazin 2023 № 19. pp. 88–91. (in German) Katja Sebald: Mysterious fairy-tale worlds In: Süddeutsche Zeitung (in German), February 17, 2023 Armin Greune: "Dream creatures made of light and glass" In: Süddeutsche Zeitung (in German), April 21, 2021 Karin Kampwerth: Three times well deserved In: Süddeutsche Zeitung (in German), March 31, 2023 (in German) Jutta Czeguhn: Beautiful unrest created by light beings – artist Vanessa Hafenbrädl illuminates Pasing Town Hall In: Süddeutsche Zeitung (in German), September 19, 2021 Susanne Greiner: A sparkling mountain of glass: Vanessa Hafenbrädl's "Glasstides" in Dießen In: Merkur (in German), May 19, 2025