Valeria Schwarz is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, art mediator, cultural manager and mother, working at the crossroads of speculative feminist fiction, welfare-orientated public space and alternative pedagogies. Her projects focus on context-specific interventions in the public sphere as a site for political, cultural and social exchange. She explores artistic processes that create new narratives and imaginaries based on solidarity and mutual understanding.
Valeria is fascinated by how individual behaviours shape collective processes; she firmly believes in collective intelligence and works on pedagogies that foster cooperation and reciprocal care.
In 2009 she co-founded iCollective e.V., a collaborative platform of artists, curators and researchers working at the intersection of arts, urban interventions and socially engaged projects from a feminist perspective.
Valeria Schwarz is the initiator of the Who Cares? Feminist Art Festival and ERbeLEBEN. She also coordinates the Bildungsverbund Urbane Künste (Urban Arts Education Network) in Berlin Mitte.
She has participated in internationals exhibitions such as the Triennale du Valais (Switzerland), OPEN SOURCE (USA), Kunstmuseum Bern (Switzerland), Spielart (München), Lisbon Architecture Triennial (Portugal), Parallel Events Manifesta 8 (Murcia Spain) and 9 (Genk, Belgium), Museu da Fotografia (Curitiba, Brazil), Matadero Madrid (Spain), Buenos Aires Night of Museums (Argentina), School of Intermedia Arts (Hang Zhou, China), Schmiede (Hallein, Austria), Argentinean Embassy in Berlin (Germany), Open Soil Days (Berlin), Climate Care (Berlin) and many more.
Public conferences include Experiment Wissen. Wissenstransfer in der Kulturellen Bildung gemeinsam gestalten (Bundesakademie für kulturelle Bildung), Production of culture and energy (Berlin Unlimited festival); Experimentdays festival (Spreefeld); Re-imagine the cityscape. How to include citizens in the decision-making for urban design at OpenART (Sweden); Participar.de (Goethe Institut Madrid); Using social networks to create participatory artworks (Social Media Week, Berlin) and Remapping Words (General Public, Berlin).
Valeria regularly teaches and runs workshops in schools, universities and institutions such as ProRespekt e.V., Haus Bastian, Bundesakademie für kulturelle Bildung, Hildesheim Universität, Floating University and Haus der Statistik.
Her academic education includes studies in Art History at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Fine Arts at the Universidad de Salamanca, and Arts in the Public Space (MA) at Ecole cantonale d'art du Valais (now École de design et haute école d’art du Valais). In 2022 she graduated from the University of Hildesheim’s certificate program Artistic Interventions in Cultural Education.