Aura Rosenberg (*1949 in New York, lives and works in New York and Berlin) is a painter, photographer, sculptor and video artist. In her diverse artistic practice she deals with sexuality, gender roles, childhood, and history, whereby the question of authenticity plays a central role. In the early 1990s, Aura Rosenberg moved to Berlin with her family and followed the traces of Walter Benjamin’s Berlin Childhood Around 1900. Rosenberg was particularly fascinated by Benjamin’s description of the Victory Column, inaugurated in 1873 to commemorate Germany’s victory over France at the Battle of Sedan, and relocated in 1939 by the National Socialists from Königsplatz opposite the Reichstag to its present location in an extended form. Rosenberg noticed that no souvenir miniatures of this Berlin landmark were available and created her own souvenir of the Victory Column on the occasion of the 2004 Berlin Biennale. The special edition Das fehlende Andenken (The Missing Souvenir) (2001/2003 /2018) offered by Neuer Berliner Kunstverein consists of a Victory Column miniature presented on a wooden console and a photograph showing the Love Parade passing by the Victory Column. Not only is Rosenberg’s work a confrontation with the traumatic history of the monument, but it also points to its appropriation and reinterpretation by subcultures.

Aura Rosenberg is a professor of photography at the Pratt Institute (since 1996) and the School of Visual Arts (since 1995) in New York. She has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2018); Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2017); Kyiv Biennale (2015); Centre d’art Contemporain, Grenoble (2014); Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund (2014); Museum der Moderne, Salzburg (2014); Frankfurter Kunstverein (2011); Julia Stoschek Collection, Dusseldorf (2007); Berlin Biennale (2004).