Contact
weissbach.silke@gmail.com

Biography

Silke Weißbach (1984, Germany) is a visual artist whose process-driven practice weaves together material alchemy, emotional resonance, and ecological consciousness. Working across painting, sculpture, and video installation, she creates environments that function as living systems—where organic substances, light, colour, scent, and memory interact over time. Her works evolve slowly, shaped by natural processes such as crystallisation, fermentation, decomposition, and evaporation.

Processing biologically active substances such as spirulina, hyaluronic acid, plant mtter, sugar, formula milk, seaweed, and wax, her work shifts state, accumulate residues, and registers time. Her material palette initiate slow, unpredictable transformations: puddles gather, wax recedes, surfaces crack or bloom. Her compositions remain porous and metabolically active—sensitive to air, light, and humidity.

At the core of Weißbach’s practice is a sustained engagement with care as a material and ecological methodology. This approach is grounded in close observation, responsiveness to environmental change, and a deliberate embrace of fragility and indeterminacy. Her process allows time transformation and natural agents to become active agents in the work, foregrounding collaboration with natural systems. This relational perspective invites a rethinking of artistic autonomy, foregrounding interdependence and an ethical imperative for living complexities of the environment.

Weissbach grew up in northern Germany near the Baltic Ocean. She studied Illustration and Graphic Design at the University of Applied Arts and Sculpture at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg before completing her MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London (2020), where she now lives and works. She was awarded for the Paul Smith Foundation Art Prize in 2025 and completed the Imagination Fellowship at Arizona State University in 2025, in recent years she was shortlisted for the London Bronze Sculpture Fellowship (2023), and the Cob Award (2024) for an interdisciplinary project on collective intelligence, bioacoustics, and ecological consciousness, as well as the Somerset House digital residency program (2023). Her Correspondence (Sugar) series, initiated in 2020, was added to the Jan van Eyck Future Materials Bank in 2022. In 2024, she participated in residencies at Xenia in North Hampshire and Porthmeor Studios in Cornwall.

Past exhibitions include Landscapes of Time and Memory, Fred Levine Gallery, Bruton, Somerst, UK 2025, Ember, Spinnerei Leipzig, Informality Gallery (2024), Kooperation, Nizza Gallery, Berlin (2024), Taking the Light out of the Prism at Duplex Gallery, Lisbon Art Weekend (2023), Pass Your Tongue Over at Kanister, Hamburg (2023), and BYOB at Bomb Factory, London (2022), Homegrown, Hauser & Wirth London (2020) and 50/50, Fold Gallery (2020).

CV

Studies
2018 – 2020 Royal College of Art: Painting (MA), London
2016 – 2018 University of Fine Arts Hamburg: Sculpture (BA), Hamburg
2013 - 2016 University of Fine Arts, Illustration (BA), Hamburg
2014 Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (KADK), Copenhagen (DEN) (studies abroad)

Exhibitions

2025
Paul Smith Foundation, London (g) (upcoming)

Currents of Kinship, Sweden, (g) (upcoming)

Landscapes of Time and Memory, Fred Levine, Bruton, Somerset (g)
At Midland Road, Informality Gallery, Bristol (g)

2024
Invited: Ember, Informality Gallery, Spinnerei Leipzig (g)
Cooperation, Nizza, Berlin (g)
Lavender, Hibernation and Neon, curated by Yueh-Ning Lee, Crypt Gallery, London (g)
TLC, Greatorex Street Gallery, London (g)

2023
Taking The Light Out Of The Prism, Duplex Gallery, Lisbon Art Weekend, Lisbon (g)
Physicaldigitalphysicaldigital, Uncloud, Utrecht (g)
Can you hear the Wood whisper, Amsterdam (g)
Pass Your Tongue Over, Kanister/Benzene, Hamburg (s)

2022
BYOB, LUX and Bomb Factory, London (g)
Working on a Dream, ATP Gallery, London (g)
Orlando, Ermita de San Pedro, GrottaAir, Spain (s)
RCA Graduates 2020, Bargehouse Gallery, London (g)
ESC 2031 AW: FALL INTO THE FUTURE, online (g)

2021
Rundgang.IO (online), view here
RCA Lost and damaged, Somerset house – AVMTV (online), view here

2020
Materias Incertas, Cultural Institute of Lagos, Portugal (g)
Mushrooms in the Dark, private members club, London (g)
Ghosts That Live Amongst Us, 155a_gallery in East Dulwich, London (g)
50/50 Fold Gallery, London (g)
Stutter, BAKIIBAK, Hastings (g)
Collaborative Lecture Performance, Salzburg Summer Academy (g)
RCA2020 (online), Royal College of Art, London (g)
Homegrown, Hauser and Wirth, London (g)
A fish you have already caught, London Atmosphere, London (g)
Snapshot, Hockney Gallery, Royal College of Art, London (g)

2019
Plastic Tongue, White House, London (g)
Brexhibition, Courtyard Gallery, Royal College of Art, London (g)
Work in Progress Show, Royal College of Art, London (g)

2018
Me, Myself and the Possibility of You, Westwerk, Hamburg (g)

2017
It never meant nothing more than it means right now, Gallery Altes Zollamt, Hamburg (g)
Benzene, Gallery Rentzelstraße, Hamburg (g)
Kunst macht Ärger, Bunkerhill Gallery, Hamburg (g)
Beat about the Bush, Gallery K70, Lübeck (s)
Elephant and Castle, 2025 Gallery, Hamburg (g)
Höhlen von Elephanta, Raum Linksrechts Gallery, Hamburg (g)

2016
Kunst in der Börse, Handelskammer Hamburg, Hamburg (g)
add art at BDO, Gallery BDO, Hamburg (d)
Overall OAM, Westwerk, Hamburg (g)
D/UMBO, U.FO Gallery, Hamburg (d)

Awards, Grants & Scholarship
Eaton Grant, London, 2024
Leonardo ASU Imagination Fellowship, Arizona 2024/2025
Shortlisted for Cob Award, Cob Gallery London 2024
Shortlisted for London Bronze Fellowship, London 2023
Shortlisted Somersethouse Creative Fellowship, London 2023
Karl H. Ditze Grant for the Best Project, HAW Hamburg 2014
Erasmus program, scholarship for Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, HAW Hamburg 2014

Publications
[ˌkoʔopeʁaˈt͡si̯oːn]–Cooperation, Nizza Gallery, 2024
Ember, Informality Gallery, 2024
RCA2020, Transmissions, 2022
Ghosts That Live Amongst Us, Ed. by Warbling Collective, 2020
50/50, Ed. by Fold Gallery, 2020
Ladies Drawing Club, ISSUE#3, 2020
Höhlen von Elephanta, exhibition catalogue, Ed. by Gallery Raum linksrechts, 2017
Kunst in der Börse, exhibition catalogue, Ed. by Handelskammer Hamburg, 2016
Add Art, exhibition catalogue, Ed. by BDO, 2016
Reportagen, Artist Book, Ed. by UFU Institut Berlin, 2015
Im Rettungsboot der Titanic, Artist Book, Ed. by HAW Hamburg, 2014
Soulmates, Woodcut, Artist Book, Ed. by HAW Hamburg, 2013

Collections
Future Material Archive, Jan van Eyck Academy, 2022

Residencies
Porthmeor Studio Residency, St. Ives, Cornwall, UK, 2025
Xenia Retreat, UK, 2024
Uncloud, Utrecht, Netherlands, 2023
Duplex Air, Lisbon 2022
Grotta Air, Aracana – Spain, 2022
Salzburg Summer Academy (online). 2020
Casa Tagumerche, La Gomera (Canary Island), 2019
Summer School, Royal College of Art, London, 2017
International Drawing Meeting ArtEZwolle, Ransdaal, Netherlands, 2014