BERLIN.- Serbian artist and photographer Mirjana Vrbaški is examining fire not simply as a destructive force, but as an agent of renewal, transformation and ecological care in her new exhibition, Controlled Burn, opening at the Galerie im Tempelhof Museum in Berlin.
On view from October 9, 2026 through January 17, 2027, the exhibition brings together recent photographs, installations and works on wood and glass that explore the changing relationship between people, landscapes and environmental intervention.
Vrbaški’s starting point is a question that has become increasingly urgent as wildfires grow more frequent around the world: how does our perception of nature change when fire becomes an ever more visible part of the landscape?
Rather than focusing exclusively on devastation, the artist considers fire’s more complex role within natural ecosystems. Her research draws in part on Indigenous ecological knowledge and traditional methods of controlled burning, practices in which carefully managed fire is used to regenerate landscapes, support biodiversity and reduce the risk of more destructive wildfires.
These techniques, long marginalized or forgotten in many regions, have attracted renewed attention as climate change and rising temperatures increase the threat of uncontrolled fires.
The project developed from Vrbaški’s 2024 photography fellowship at Haus am Kleistpark. During the fellowship, she studied Dreifaltigkeitsfriedhof III in Mariendorf-Nord, a cemetery that also functions as a fragile urban ecosystem and diverse habitat threatened by planned development.
Her engagement with that site gradually expanded into a broader investigation of how humans shape, protect and sometimes endanger the natural environments around them.
Traveling through different parts of Europe, Vrbaški photographed forests, meadows, burned terrain and landscapes at various stages of regrowth. The resulting images record places altered by fire while also drawing attention to the resilience of natural systems.
For Controlled Burn, Vrbaški takes that investigation beyond conventional photography. Some images are transferred directly onto wooden panels and then exposed to fire, allowing the material itself to become part of the work.
The process introduces an element of unpredictability. Although the burning is controlled, its effects can never be fully determined in advance. The scorched surfaces, grain of the wood and photographic images of trees and landscapes become inseparable from one another.
Large-scale diptychs featuring forest imagery are presented alongside installations, smaller works and photographs printed on glass. Across the exhibition, image, material and the physical traces of fire continually shift in relation to one another.
The result is an exhibition that treats fire as both subject and medium, asking viewers to reconsider familiar ideas of destruction, preservation and renewal.
Vrbaški, born in 1978, is a Serbian visual artist based in Berlin since 2011. Her long-term photographic projects have received several international awards, and her work has been shown at institutions including Fotomuseum Den Haag, Kunsthal Rotterdam, the National Portrait Gallery in London and Museum Kranenburgh in the Netherlands.
The exhibition opens Thursday, October 8 at 7 p.m. with an introduction by Rossella Scrascia of Haus am Kleistpark.
A public conversation titled Catching Fire: Reflections on the Relationship Between Humans and Fire in Ecology and Art will take place on November 26 at 7 p.m. with Vrbaški and geoecologist Dr. Ramesh Glckler of Utrecht University, moderated by art historian Julia Kochanek of Technische Universitt Berlin.
The exhibition concludes with a finissage on January 17 from 4 to 6 p.m. in the presence of the artist.
