Künstlerhaus Bethanien Residency, Berlin 2025-26

During my residency at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, I am developing a new body of work where birds, sunlight, and language interlace as forms of kinship. Through painting, sculpture and sound, the project draws on wetland species and solar radiance to imagine poetic systems of connection and energy consumption.

Madeleine Kelly Sun and Moon 2025 Oil and acrylic on polyester 77 x 92 cm

In Sun and Moon (2026) a doll-like body leans over an oily, whirling base of vermilion red and alizarin crimson lines.  Its simplified arms end in lightbulbs—cool on the left and warm on the right—suggesting a body merging with a machine, from hand to bulb and ultimately to sun. The face is lit by the warm glow, as if attuning to its posthuman form, where light emanates from the figure-as-light. The passage of a day is embodied in the suggestion of repeated labour, burning, and spinning, but also the spiritual and primordial encounter between eye and flame.