Haus der Kunst Munich Announces 2023 Programme

Haus der Kunst Munich Announces 2023 Programme

• Rirkrit tiravanija designs first opera stage in collaboration with bavarian state opera 

• Judy chicago, lygia clark, faith wilding among those featured in restaging of historic immersive environments by women artists

• Machine learning and live installations in first european solo show for wangshui

• First european exhibition of meredith monk’s immersive installations across six decades

Haus der Kunst in Munich, one of Europe’s most prominent experimental arts spaces, under the leadership of Andrea Lissoni, continues to expand and diversify its work in 2023, exploring how artists and thinkers respond to a world dominated by rapid environmental, technological and social change. 

Andrea Lissoni: “We live in an interconnected world, where everything informs and is informed by everything else. The programme puts the focus on interdisciplinary projects, expanding the role of performing arts and new media, mixing generations and genres. As a whole, the programme stands to re-examine the stories we are told, highlight what is missing from historic narratives and re-purpose the urgency of acting locally while keeping the world in our minds.”

The commitment to a younger generation continues, and partnerships are paramount to the new model. As an institution, Haus der Kunst is also transforming: a new approach to Learning and Engagement is at the core of this process, and a new visual identity for the house will highlight the intertwined programme.

The 2023 Programme Highlights Include

Rirkrit Tiravanija, May 2023

The work of Rirkrit Tiravanija (born 1961, Buenos Aires) will be presented throughout the month of May at various sites in Haus der Kunst. The exhibition coincides with Toshio Hosokawa’s opera Hanjo, which will be staged in the Westgalerie of Haus der Kunst in collaboration with the Bayerische Staatsoper, for which Tiravanija is creating the stage design. 

Inside Other Spaces: Environments by Women Artists 1956—1976, September 8th, 2023, til March 10th, 2024

With works by Judy Chicago, Lygia Clark, Laura Grisi, Aleksandra Kašuba, Lea Lublin, Marta Minujín, Tania Mouraud, Maria Nordman, Nanda Vigo, Faith Wilding, Tsuruko Yamazaki. Focusing on the history of environments, this exhibition reconstructs the immersive art works of eleven female artists spanning three generations from Asia, Europe as well as North and South America. The exhibition reframes the artistic canon by presenting women’s fundamental role in the development of environments. 

WangShui: Certainty of the Flesh, September 8th, 2023, til March 10th, 2024

The first major exhibition in Europe by American artist WangShui (born 1986) develops sprawling socio-political narratives that integrate video, sculpture and painting and often incorporate machine learning to create live installations. The exhibition at Haus der Kunst simulates non-human bodies in a future where technologically supported extensions of the self transform interpersonal communication and bodily reality.

Meredith Monk , November 10th, 2023, til March 3rd, 2024

The most comprehensive survey to date of the celebrated American artist Meredith Monk (born 1942, New York), developed in close collaboration with the artist, presenting works from across the last six decades. While Monk is widely recognised in the worlds of music and theatre, this exhibition will be the first in Europe dedicated to her immersive work, embracing the cross-disciplinary way in which she has worked throughout her career.

About Haus der Kunst

Haus der Kunst, Munich, is a non-collecting public museum and a global centre for contemporary art. It is dedicated to the exploration of the diverse histories of contemporary art based on a foundation of focused exhibitions, performance and music events, and education. Through its programmes, Haus der Kunst affirms and acknowledges that the trajectories of contemporary art are global, multifocal, poly­semic, and unbounded by cartographic, conceptual, and cultural limits. It is a place of dialogue and knowledge transfer and invites visitors to immerse themselves fully, both mentally and physically, in the world of contemporary art.

“In a new era for Haus der Kunst, we want to sharpen the perspective of contemporary art by implicating many viewpoints, deploying multiple tools, and developing a critical context for the examination, articulation, illumination, and transmission of the historical dimension of contemporaneity.“ Andrea Lissoni, Artistic Director Haus der Kunst, Munich.

Karrabing Film Collective, Wonderland, January 1st to July 7th, 2023

“Wonderland” is the first major museum survey of the Karrabing Film Collective, an Indigenous media group based in Australia’s Northern Territory. Karrabing uses filmmaking and installation as a form of grassroots resistance and self-organisation. Comprising approximately thirty members from different generations who predominantly live in the Belyuen Community, the collective creates films they call “improvisational realism”: a form of cinema that seeks to open up a space beyond binaries of the fictional and the documentary, or the past and the present. In so doing, Karrabing have crafted an inventive, unexpected and deeply ironic filmic language, whose unique conventions have since been lauded within the worlds of film and visual arts. The individual components of the exhibition — videos, sounds, voices, as well as a comprehensive reader — offer the opportunity of an exercise in learning, designed to challenge universal notions of hegemonic understandings of power and knowledge production. 

Katalin Ladik, Ooooooooo-pus, March 3rd to September 10th, 2023

“Ooooooooo-pus” is the first survey exhibition in Germany of Katalin Ladik’s foundational work in poetry, performance, and sound. The work of the trailblazing artist (born 1942, Novi Sad) has its spiritual and conceptual roots in the multi-ethnic and feminist avant-gardes of former Yugoslavia. Ladik often embodying the “feminine”, draws on folkloric, mythological, and religious themes to challenge gender roles and female archetypes, using her body and voice as both instrument and medium. For Ladik, the body engenders poetry. It is a site of self-representation she has consistently explored in her performances from the 1960s onward. Her visual poems — collages that include sewing patterns, sheet music, and found objects such as circuit boards from radios and kitchen appliances — function as musical scores. They explore connections between voice and image while expanding the category of language through phonetic experiments. “Ooooooooo-pus” brings together Ladik’s multifaceted oeuvre in an exhibition that should be heard as much as seen.

Hamid Zénati, All-Over, March 16th to July 23rd, 2023

“Hamid Zénati: All-Over” is the first institutional exhibition dedicated to the work of the artist Hamid Zénati (born 1944, Constantine, Algeria; d. 2022, Munich, Germany). Travelling between Munich and Algiers, Zénati’s artistic practice ranged from painting, textiles, interior and fashion design, to photography, always driven by an anarchic impetus to create. The presentation features work from an almost six-decade-long career and provides insight into the artist’s distinct cosmos for the first time. Zénati’s work is characterized by the sheer inexhaustible abundance of forms, patterns, and the combination of colours, materials, and techniques. As a self-taught artist, Zénati created his powerful yet playful compositions without conceding to predetermined hierarchies or judgments. Mostly unknown, leading a diasporic life in precarious conditions, yet a keen observer of social, cultural, and artistic movements, Zénati developed a unique cosmopolitan perspective.

Generously supported by The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, Stiftung Kunstfonds and Kulturreferat München.

Trace, Formations of Likeness, Photography and Video from The Walther Collection, April 14th to July 23rd 2023

This major survey exhibition is in collaboration with The Walther Collection, a New York/New-Ulm—based art foundation internationally recognized for their critical engagement with contemporary and historical photography, as well as lens-based media art. The more than 1,000 works on display by a diverse group of artists from different cultural backgrounds, as well as archival, documentary and vernacular photography, offer a global context to reflect on the divergent trajectories of photography today. Collectively, they showcase the medium’s capacity as both an instrument for empowerment and formation of the self, as well as its complex uses as a tool for control and subjugation. The exhibition’s core focus is portrait photography — of people, objects, and places — and the tracing of societal transformation across geographic spaces and contrasting socio-political and cultural landscapes. The substantial breadth of the exhibition encompasses works from the last three centuries and brings together artists from Africa, America, Europe, and Asia.

With works by anonymous artists and Richard Avedon, Martina Bacigalupo, Yto Barrada, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Jodi Bieber, Karl Blossfeldt, Edson Chagas, Song Dong, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Samuel Fosso, Yang Fudong, Pieter Hugo, Seydou Keïta, Lebohang Kganye, Zhang Huan, David Goldblatt, Sze Tsung Nicolás Leong, Christine Meissner, Sabelo Mlangeni, Santu Mofokeng, Zanele Muholi, Eadweard Muybridge, J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere, Sheng Qui, Jo Ractliffe, Rong Rong, Thomas Ruff, August Sander, Berni Searle, Accra Shepp, Malick Sidibé, Guy Tillim, Ai Weiwei, Cang Xin, Lu Yang, Xu Yong, Luo Yongjin, Kohei Yoshiyuki, and others.

Rirkrit Tiravanija, May 2023

The work of Rirkrit Tiravanija (born 1961, Buenos Aires) will be presented throughout the month of May at various sites in Haus der Kunst. The exhibition coincides with Toshio Hosokawa’s opera Hanjo, which will be staged in the Westgalerie of Haus der Kunst in collaboration with the Bayerische Staatsoper, for which Tiravanija is creating the stage design. The Opera Hanjo is based on a modern Nō play by the same name which tells the story of two lovers and explores the borders between dream and reality, between madness and sanity. Tiravanija’s practice focuses on the artistic production of social engagement, often inviting viewers to inhabit, participate and activate his work, engaging in shared rituals and actions. Over the course of his thirty-year career, he has also come to incorporate installations, painting, printmaking, video, photography, mixed-media assemblage, and music into his practice, but always with an emphasis on varied cultural spaces and temporalities.

The staging of Hanjo by Toshio Hosokawa is a cooperation of Haus der Kunst and Bayerische Staatsoper.

Ars Viva 2023, May 5th to July 9th, 2023

Haus der Kunst continues its commitment to a younger generation of artists: The winners of “ars viva 2023”, Paul Kolling, Shaun Motsi, and Leyla Yenirce, will present new site-specific works at Haus der Kunst, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the renowned award for emerging artists. The reality of current events is present in the works of all three artists. Paul Kolling is one third of the terra0.org collective, which explores the creation of technological hybrid ecosystems. At the interface between moving image, sound, and performance, Leyla Yenirce creates works that address the persecution of the Kurdish Yezidi religious minority and the resistance of female fighters. The works of Shaun Motsi question how knowledge and information are constructed, inherited, and acquired. Through film, painting, installation, and text, he explores cultural narratives and their connections within a global context.

An exhibition by Haus der Kunst München in cooperation with Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI.

Archives in Residence, Archiv 451, Trikont Verlag, June 2nd, 2023, til January 7th, 2024

The exhibition series “Archives in Residence” in the Archiv Galerie, which has been running since 2018, focuses on independent local archives as alternative places of knowledge production. Following presentations of collections on art in the context of developmental disability (Euward, 2021), and on queerness in Munich (Forum Queeres Archiv München, 2022) the series continues with “Archiv 451, Trikont Verlag”. Trikont was named after the tricontinental conference at which strategies against the discrimination of the so-called “Third World” were developed in Havana in 1966. Among the first and most successful books were the Mao Bible and Che Guevara’s Bolivian Diary, which went through eleven editions. Trikont Verlag published the earliest German-language publications and translations on the European and regional labour movement, on decolonization and anti-fascism, on alternative ways of life and radical social changes. In 1971, Trikont — Unsere Stimme [Our Voice] started producing records, which resulted in Trikont Musikverlag, the oldest German independent label.

Wang Shui, Certainty of the Flesh, September 8th, 2023, til March 10th, 2024

“Certainty of the Flesh” is the first institutional solo exhibition of WangShui (born 1986) in Europe. WangShui develops sprawling socio-political narratives that integrate nature, technology and living beings. They work across video, sculpture and painting and often incorporate machine learning to create live installations. The exhibition at Haus der Kunst simulates non-human bodies in a future where technologically supported extensions of the self transform interpersonal communication and corporeality. The exhibition includes three generations of ethereal paintings co-authored with AI, and the new installation Certainty of the Flesh, which consists of customized LED screens that are interwoven with each other and with the surrounding architecture of Haus der Kunst. Inspired by science fiction, ancient mythologies and scripts of contemporary reality TV, an algorithmically generated “artificial drama” develops in real time and forms windows into virtual worlds. It is exhibited in dialogue with “Inside Other Spaces”.

Inside Other Spaces, Environments by Women Artists 1956—1976, September 8th, 2023, til March 10th, 2024

The group exhibition “Inside Other Spaces. Environments by Women Artists 1956—1976” focuses on the history of environments in the period from the late 1950s to the late 1970s, highlighting women's fundamental contributions to the field. It features the work of eleven female artists spanning three generations from Asia, Europe as well as North- and South America: Judy Chicago, Lygia Clark, Laura Grisi, Aleksandra Kašuba, Lea Lublin, Marta Minujín, Tania Mouraud, Maria Nordman, Nanda Vigo, Faith Wilding, and Tsuruko Yamazaki. Environments became a major feature in the international art world, yet so far, their historiography centres almost exclusively on the United States, and partially Europe, as well as on the works of male artists. As with several shows within this season at Haus der Kunst, “Inside Other Spaces” looks to re-examine stories and histories and to highlight those that are missing from historic narratives. This exhibition reframes the artistic canon by presenting women’s fundamental role in the development of environments, which have gone on to have a lasting impact in the field of visual art. Since most environments were deconstructed or destroyed right after their display, “Inside Other Spaces” will be the first show of this kind ever realised, reconstructing the immersive art works.

With works by Judy Chicago, Lygia Clark, Laura Grisi, Aleksandra Kašuba, Lea Lublin, Marta Minujín, Tania Mouraud, Maria Nordman, Nanda Vigo, Faith Wilding, and Tsuruko Yamazaki.

Meredith Monk, November 10th, 2023, til March 3rd, 2024

Haus der Kunst is organising the most comprehensive survey to date of the celebrated American artist Meredith Monk (born 1942, New York), presenting works from across the last six decades. Monk seamlessly works across disciplines — pushing the boundaries of music, theatre, dance, video, and installation — while at the core, continuously exploring the evocative power and dimensionality of the human voice. She is considered a groundbreaking figure in site-specific performance, and her interdisciplinary approach has had a significant influence on subsequent generations of artists and performers. While Monk is widely recognised in the worlds of music and theatre, the exhibition at Haus der Kunst will be the first in Europe dedicated to her immersive work. The show presents major works from her oeuvre as multi-sensorial, innovative installations, embracing the cross-disciplinary way in which she has worked throughout her career. 

This first survey on the oeuvre of Meredith Monk is a collaboration in two acts at Haus der Kunst München and Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, together with the Hartwig Art Foundation. The exhibition is developed in close collaboration with Meredith Monk and The House Foundation for the Arts. 

Tune, January til December 2023

Tune is a series of short sound residencies at Haus der Kunst, located between the realms of sound, music, and visual art. The invited artists move across genres, eras, and influences, and generate sonic responses and exchanges with the wider programming at Haus der Kunst.

The Tune programme for 2023 begins with music that is radically free, pushing the boundaries of improvisation. Space is made for a heightened group experience, and what Alvin Curran describes as “plain musical vulcanism”, often in reaction to the political and social context in which it is made. Curran’s work will form an echo to that of Joan Jonas, a longtime creative collaborator. Through post-punk, dub, metal, free jazz, and experimental electronics, the line between composition and improvisation in the unfolding programme becomes blurred. Raw emotions and their expression form a connecting thread, enabled by group dynamics and creative intuition. A focus on the voice and direct expression unfolds, inspired by the work of Meredith Monk. Lyricism, neo-blues, soul and R&B guide introspection and intimacy, while the space between the sound and meaning of words is excavated. As with the work of Katalin Ladik, instability becomes a generative force creating space that is not static and overly defined, but open and with potential.

Alongside the performance programme, an artist is invited to make a new acoustic work to be installed in the Terrassensaal for nine months. The commission also includes sound produced for Haus der Kunst to use online, and to play at live events, conferences, and talks. The artists work becomes the voice of the museum, and connects the museum’s online presence and physical space. After Lamin Fofana’s a call to disorder, Ihor Okuniev’s work Land is the second commission. 

As well as the Terrassensaal commission, Haus der Kunst has supported many original productions as part of the TUNE programme. Together these include Lamin Fofana's composition a call to disorder (2021), the sound installation |Ngo| (2021) by Nkisi, the film Amaru's Tongue: Daughter (2021) by Chuiquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton, the sound installation and performance by Beatrice Dillon Impossible Ideal Angle (2022) with Eve Stainton, a sound installation by Emiranda (2022), the audiovisual performance by Christelle Oyiri Godspeed (2022) and the composition Land (2022) by Ihor Okuniev.

Artists invited in 2023 include: Ihor Okuniev, Alvin Curran, Standing on the Corner, Lifetones, Phew, Nina, Still House Plants, Exotic Sin, Dawuna, Katalin Ladik, and Duma.

Haus der Kunst, Prinzregentenstraße 1, 80538 Munich, opening hours Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday 10am—8pm; Thursday 10am—10pm, Tuesday closed, admission Day ticket 12 euros (9 euros concessions); Single ticket 5 respectively 11 euros (3 respectively 8 euros concessions); Young people up to 18 years, Students and trainees from 18 upwards with pass 5 euros, Children up to 12 years free, day ticket for families (2 adults and children) 24 euros, annual card 50 euros, partner card 90 euros, guided tours 3 euros.