SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Swedish-born artist Nathalie Djurberg’s unsettling avian menagerie takes flight this fall at YBCA. In addition to the wild flock of more than stunning 80 freestanding bird sculptures on view, the exhibition also includes five animated films, in which avian psychology is superimposed upon human behavior with extraordinary results. Using actual bird species as inspiration for her sometimes grotesque figures, Djurberg explores physical and psychological transformation as well as pageantry, perversion and abjection. Her clay animations are set to music and sound effects by her partner and collaborator Hans Berg. Djurberg’s nightmarish cinematic tales depict the depths of jealousy, revenge, lust, submission, gluttony and other primal emotions with an unblinking eye.

In conjunction with the exhibition The Parade: Nathalie Djurberg with Music by Hans Berg, YBCA presents A Mad Tea Party: Five Videos by Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, a selection of important works where complex and twisted narratives are performed by molding clay figures in constructed environments. Spanning the past eight years of the artists’ career, these animations depict their characteristically dark tales that plumb the depths of human psychology to dramatic effect, and include human and animal characters that are thrown together into strange and mythological scenarios laden with sexuality and violence.

Nathalie Djurberg was born in Lysekil, Sweden in 1978. She studied art at Folkuniversitetet (1994–1995) and Hovedskous Ar t School (1995–1997), both in Gothenburg, Sweden, before receiving her MFA from Malmö Art Academy in 2002. She has honed a distinctive style of stopmotion animation since 1999, when she first taught herself how to make films. Using the pliability of clay, her handcrafted narratives explore intense primal emotions in wry allegories of human behavior and social taboo. Increasingly, her practice has blurred the cinematic and the sculptural in immersive environments that integrate moving images and sound with related set pieces. She currently lives and works with Hans Berg in Rättvik, Sweden.

Hans Berg was born in Rättvik, Sweden, in 1978, He works as a techno and house music producer and is a self-taught musician who began playing the drums in punk and rock bands when he was 14-years-old. A year later, he started creating electronic music—which he has made ever since—when he purchased his first synthesizer and sampler. In addition to his many live concerts, Berg also has an extensive discography with releases by Kant Recordings, Tsunami Productions and other labels. He met Djurberg in Berlin in 2004, and since then he has composed the music for all of her films and installations.

The artists’ collaborations have been featured widely in solo and group exhibitions around the world. Most notably, in 2009, they presented their installation The Experiment in Making Worlds at the 53rd Venice Biennale, for which Djurberg was awarded the prestigious Silver Lion for a Promising Young Artist. They have had other solo exhibitions at Camden Arts Centre, London (2011); Museum Boijmans Van Beunjngen, Rotterdam (2011); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohion (2011); Natural History Museum, Basel (2010); kestnergesllschaft, Hannover (2010); OMA Prada Transformer, Seoul (2009); Frye Art Museum, Seattle (2009); Hammer Museum, Los Angles (2008); Fondazione Prada, Milan (2008); Kunsthalle Winterthur, Switzerland (2007); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2007); and Kunsthalle Winterthur, Switzerland (2007).