Dikla Stern is an artist, designer, and lecturer. In 2003, she received a diploma in Fine Arts and Design from the Avni Institute in Tel Aviv. In 2007, she completed her Master of Arts in Communication Design, Philosophy and Media Theory, at the Mannheim University of Applied Sciences under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Thomas Friedrich (Editor of the Journal for Critical Theory).

Her Master’s thesis, Surveillance and Punishing: The Business of Fear (2007), was a study of how rising demands for security infiltrate private and public life. Exploring surveillance technologies, security products, and the economics of fear, she demonstrated how existential anxieties are transformed into consumer demand and ultimately into profit, a cycle that borders on collective obsession. This critical lens has since become inseparable from Stern’s artistic practice. Her works address the ambiguities of power and law, freedom and control, with irony and urgency, exposing the fractures beneath social conventions. In recent years, she has employed word–image constellations: writing emerges not merely as a graphic element, but as a performative act that shapes perception, questions identities, and insists on language as a site of reflection.

She has received support from the Adrienne and Otmar Hornbach Foundation, the Dieter-Kissel Foundation, the Werner-Deschauer Foundation, and in 2025 a grant from the Kulturstiftung Thüringen. Her works have been presented at the German Hygiene Museum (Dresden), the Potemka Gallery (Leipzig), or the European Month of Photography (Berlin), and are held in private, corporate, and museum collections internationally. Beyond the art world, her works have also appeared in film and television productions on platforms such as Netflix, Amazon, and ZDF.

Recent and upcoming projects include exhibitions at the Anneliese Deschauer Gallery in Thuringia – marking 1700 years of Jewish life in Germany), and in cooperation with the Wartburgkreis and the Art Association Eisenach, and also the ACHAVA Festival Thuringia 2024 LILILALALAND. Upcoming CICA Museum presentations will take place in South Korea and New York (2025).