Lene Berg was born in Oslo and is currently based in Berlin. Berg primarily works with video, photography and text. By using different medias and fictions in her installations, she explores the relationship between contemporary images and inherited conventions, between clichés and facts, between politics and rules of narration. During the last years she has been particularly focused on the distribution of ideas, and the conditions of artistic freedom in relation to political agendas.
In "Stalin by Picasso or Portrait of Woman with Moustache" (2008) she uses the scandal caused by Pablo Picassos drawing of Josef Stalin in 1953 to highlight the complex relationship between art and politics, between collective perception and individual ex-pression. The public part of the project, three façade-banners, caused controversy both in Oslo and New York during 2008, ironically mirroring what took place in 1953.
Lene Berg's recent project, "The Drowned One", was first shown at the Sydney Biennial in 2008. It presents an unusual view on the history of photography, dealing in particular with the relationship between photography and truth, using the rather unknown proto-photographer Hippolyte Bayard as a starting point.
Ms. Berg's "Gentlemen and Arseholes" (2006), consisting of a video and a book, revolves around the contradictions in art and propaganda during the Cold War. The project focuses on Encounter, a cultural journal published in London and distributed during the 1950s and 60s as a vehicle for the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Berg's approach called into question what was defined as a "liberal conspiracy" and later deemed a successful state sponsored cultural effort carried out by the CIA.
In 2008 Lene Berg participated in the Sydney Biennial, the Taipei Biennial, was shown at Whitechapel Gallery in London, at Fotogalleriet in Oslo and at Cooper Union in New York.