As an artist, teacher and researcher, my interests lie on the knowledge bearing side of art – on how art helps us understand the world and each other, how art operates the more than rational in our societies and culture, and gives form to the unknown.
In my artistic practice, this interest has taken the form of performances, installations, workshops and sound pieces; the establishment of a free university and a think tank on radical pedagogy; two educational art programs, an open studio space and a residency program for artists at risk. Parallel to my artistic practice, I have been invested in teaching, in art academies as well as museums, colleges and activist spaces.
A decade into my career I journeyed into research. My doctoral studies started from an examination of my artistic practice, interrogating the ideas on utopia and radical pedagogy that had framed my work, to create a new platform for my practice built on embodied learning and pedagogies of the unknown. This carried over into my current research, that investigates how place-specific artistic methods helps us understand displacement and belonging, in and beyond times of settler colonization. I have been challenging myself to use my family’s history to understand our responsibilities for place in the present, by learning about ideas and practices of reciprocity from indigenous theory on land relations. The research has led me to return to drawing, to explore the gift as a research method, to practice counter-mapping as well as oral storytelling. I assess my work with the help of researchers from other fields in a research group on Hospitality and Displacement.
Lisa Nyberg’s work has been exhibited at Bildmuseet, the Research Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Kunsthal Aarhus, Konsthall C, Trondheim Art Biennial, Signal – Center for Contemporary Art, Röda Sten, Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, Dunkers Kulturhus, Liljevalchs Konsthall, Gothenburg Art Museum, Rooseum among others. She has been awarded several working grants from the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, the IASPIS project studio in Stockholm as well as the Malmö City Grant for Artistic Development. She teaches regularly at art academies in the Nordic countries, as The Royal Danish Art Academy, The Danish National School of Performing Arts, Konstfack, HDK-Valand, Malmö University and others.