He's a Berlin-based artist and activist. He has a dual background in the arts, having earned a BFA in Documentary Film from the Pratt Institute in New York (1998–2003) followed by an MFA in Painting from the Slade School of Art in London (2003–2005). This combination allows him to document his urban interventions with a filmmaker’s precision and a painter’s eye. His multifaceted projects range from performative actions and video to installations, paintings, and drawings. Through the use of humor, sensitivity, and precise interventions, Downey investigates the underlying structures of our cities, landscapes, and sacred sites, as well as forgotten peripheries and contested borders. Since 2003 Brad Downey has exhibited widely in Europe, as well as in numerous international exhibitions, museums and biennials, from the Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien di Berlino, in a collective show named Backjumps: The Live Issue, to the Tbilisi Architecture Biennale in 2020. There have been several monographic exhibitions of Downeys work, including Slow Motion Disasters at Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien in Berlin in 2019, and Reverse Culture Shock at MU Hybrid Art House in Eindhoven in 2018. Further solo exhibitions include Flupp Blubb Boing at Kunstverein Arnsberg in 2020, and This Echo at the Galerija Vžigalica in Ljubljana in 2019. In 2020 Hatje Cantz published a 20 year survey of Downeys work entitled Slapstick Formalism Process, Project, Object.