Donna Volta Newmen
Anna Maria Merkel works under the name Donna Volta Newmen as a visual artist, freelance artistic director and curator in Berlin. Inspired by the 'relational aesthetics' concept of philosopher Nicolas Bourriaud, she has been pursuing collective working methods in her curatorial practice since 2015. Through collaborative forms of authorship, programming, and world building, spaces are created beyond ordinary exhibition contexts. Nemwen studied at the intersection of fine art, design, and critical theory. In 2019, she graduated with an MA in Fine Art and Design from the Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam (Gerrit Rietveld Academie). In recent years, Newmen has designed and co-directed projects and (group) exhibitions for the independent art space Macao Milano, the Istanbul Design Biennale, the Performance Philosophy Biennale Amsterdam, the Dutch National Opera and the British Film Institute, among others. Since 2021, she has been working on a project basis as General Assistant to the Artistic Director for the Adrian Piper Research Foundation in Berlin.