Annamaria Merkel

As a researcher and designer, Annamaria Merkel (1990, Germany) builds her practice on a magic understanding of the world. She seeks to expose, question and challenge obsolete norms and hierarchies around gender struggles to postcolonial issues. Rigid power structures and the tremendous complexity of systemic shifts have inspired her to investigate stakeholders and institutions to become a conduit for change.

Her research on the semiotics of experience marketing led her to investigate a product and brand experience of large automotive manufacturer to understand how the language of signs is used to create corporate rituals. Merkel considers revolution as an extraordinarily designed experience that lies within a creative fusion of various cultures, intellectual worlds, institutional players, free spirits and other-than-human beings. A.M. Merkel holds a BA in Integrated Design from the University of Applied Sciences Cologne where she specialized in Gender Studies.