Bienenluft

Bienenluft is an artistic research project by Kimberly Meenan that explores the different cultural ways people get high from sniffing bees. The artistic research focuses on the various architectural colonisation of bees, which is an artistic and anthropological phenomenon that creates a metaphor of human’s relationship to nature.

Bee-air, translated directly from German into English, would be called ‘bee-air’. There are many other names such as api-air, bee bag inhalation, hive air therapy, and simply inhaling hive air. It may sound a bit absurd at first, but this form of therapy is becoming increasingly popular around the world, despite its obscure beginnings.

Kimberly Meenan (1982) is an installation artist born in Virginia and has lived in more than six different countries. She is currently living and working in Berlin, Germany. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Interdisciplinary Studies at the Kansas City Art Institute in Missouri and a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Public Art from the Bauhaus University in Weimar. Additionally, she studied sculpture at the Edinburgh College of Art.

Her installations explicitly deal with people’s relation to nature. Meenan has exhibited internationally in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the USA, and Scotland. She received awards for her work, such as the NEUSTART KULTUR - Deutscher Künstlerbund e.V. and Kulturprojekte Berlin, Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa.

She has also given many talks, at the Fuller Lecture series, ACC Gallery, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt to mention a few. She has worked as a guest lecture at the Bauhaus Universität Weimar and OTH Regensburg. Her work can be seen on permanent display at the German Bee Museum in Weimar and is found in many private collections around the world.