Bettina Johae is an artist with an architectural background. Her projects about the change and perception of cities have been exhibited at the New York Public Library, Chelsea Art Museum, ICP, Bronx Museum, Goethe Institute, Aljira, Smack Mellon, Maccarone Gallery, NUS Museum Singapore, AIV Berlin, and at AiOP and Conflux festivals, among others. Awards and residencies include the AIM and EMERGE programs, a DAAD fellowship, the MacDowell Colony, NUS Center for the Arts/Singapore, Pilotprojekt Gropiusstadt/Berlin, SIM/Reykjavik and the VLA Art & Law residency. Reviews and articles on her work appeared in The New York Times, New York Arts Magazine, The Village Voice, Brooklyn Rail, New York Press, NY Sun, Metro magazine, the DAAD journal “letter” and in 306090, an architectural magazine distributed by Princeton Architectural Press. Her project “borough edges, nyc” is in the photography collection of the NYPL. She holds Masters degrees in Architecture and Studio Art. Born in Berlin, Germany, she has lived in Brooklyn since 2001.

In my projects, I aim to challenge common perceptions about the urban environment by exposing overlooked views and facts, highlighting the friction between adjacent areas and documenting changes in one place over time. Using a mixture of media – photography, video, maps and text – I have captured images of a changing New York and a continuously transformed Berlin, charted my daily movements through the city over the course of a year, videotaped the full lengths’ of New York’s five Broadways and documented the perimeters of the five boroughs - questioning the imagery typically associated with New York City – as well as followed tourists on their sightseeing paths through several cities. Recent projects address current sociopolitical issues such as gentrification and condemnation.