Fujiko Nakaya: Nebel Leben

“Fog makes visible things become invisible and invisible things—like wind—become visible.” Fujiko Nakaya

Fujiko Nakaya. Nebel Leben
April 8–July 31, 2022
Haus der Kunst presents the first comprehensive survey exhibition outside of Japan of the ground-breaking artist Fujiko Nakaya (b. 1933, Sapporo, Japan).

Nakaya‘s fog sculptures defy traditional conventions of sculpture by generating temporary, borderless sites that physically interact with the public. The ephemeral sculptures envelop audiences into a disorientating, transcendent connection with their environment. Driven by early ecological concerns, Nakaya’s work deals with pure water and air, mediums that have particular resonance in the face of the climate crisis.

Gaining prominence in the 1970s as a member of Experiments in Arts and Technology (E.A.T.), creating over 90 installations and performances all over the world. Nakaya consistently collaborated with artists from a variety of disciplines, including architecture, music, dance, and light to express the polymorphic nature of fog. From her rarely seen early paintings to her fog sculptures, including two new site-specific sculptures created especially for Haus der Kunst, along with single-channel videos, installations, and documentation that reveal Nakaya’s cultural and social references, this experiential exhibition will offer an in-depth survey of one of Japan’s foremost artists.

As one of the leading exhibitions in the new programming model at Haus der Kunst, Nakaya’s work will be placed in direct relation to her social and cultural network. The coinciding exhibitions of the Japanese art collective Dumb Type, and the German artist and musician Carsten Nicolai. The exhibition will be accompanied by a screening programme on Ivanami films conceived in collaboration with the Harvard Film Archive and a symposium on July 30 which includes a new work by artist Jenna Sutela.

Programme preview

Dumb Type
May 6–September 11, 2022
The visionary performances and installations of the Japanese collective Dumb Type are at the forefront of debate concerning identity and sexual politics, as well as with the effects of technological progress on the body. Featuring three specially conceived installations, the exhibition interrogates how digital media and technology constitute a formative and irrevocable part of our lived experience, conflating the past with the future, desire with despair. Probing the dizzying banality of AI-inflected speech formation, the exhibition also premieres a new operatic sound sculpture of field recordings created by Ryuichi Sakamoto for Haus der Kunst.

Christine Sun Kim
May 13–August 21, 2022
Through large-scale murals, interventions in public space, and dynamic charcoal drawings, Christine Sun Kim (b. 1980, Orange County, California, USA) examines the social function of sound. For Haus der Kunst’s middle hall, the artist created a site-specific multimedia work that uses her own notation of American Sign Language to address experiences of duration, repetition, and emotional labour within ableist societies. Kim´s scaled-up, animated drawings of American Sign Language combined with text, form a spatial, corporeal and time-based composition that offers access to a multisensory communication model.

Carsten Nicolai
June 3–July 17, 2022
Carsten Nicolai (b. 1965, Berlin, Germany) fuses the disciplines of music, art, and science. Taking inspiration from the Zen gardens of Japan, which allow the gardener to observe patterns and abstract language in nature, Nicolai’s visual and sonic media installation sets the scene for chance compositions to emerge. To create his soundscape for the exhibition, the artist combined electromagnetic waves picked up by the historic antenna on the rooftop of Haus der Kunst along with instruments designed by Nicolai.

Tony Cokes
June 10–October 23, 2022
This exhibition marks Germany’s first solo show of the artist Tony Cokes (b.1956 Richmond, Virginia, USA) and the first collaboration to be staged between Haus der Kunst and Kunstverein München. Taking the historical connection between the two exhibition sites as a point of departure, Cokes will present newly commissioned works, titled “Some Munich Moments 1937-1972” that span both institutions and public space.

Since the late 1990s, Cokes has developed a unique language for video essays that vehemently rejects representative imagery. The artist’s fast-moving audiovisual works are based on found text fragments and pop music, stemming from different times and contexts.

Joan Jonas
September 9, 2022–January 29, 2023
The most comprehensive exhibition of work dedicated to visionary artist Joan Jonas (b.1936, New York) in Germany to date has been conceived by the artist and Haus der Kunst in collaboration with Tate Modern, London.

Characterised by her fundamental interest in cultural rites and the dynamic processes of mirroring, shifting, and redefining genre and time, this major retrospective is underpinned by themes that have recurred throughout Jonas’ career. Environmental issues, echoed in her early videos are central to multimedia installations, which address climate change and the threat to the ecosystem. Jonas also explores collective narratives of mythology, fairy tales and fables, setting them against a backdrop of contemporary, socio-political events.

Hamid Zénati
November 11, 2022–March, 2023
Haus der Kunst is presenting the first institutional show of artist Hamid Zénati (b. 1944 in Constantine, Algeria, d. 2022 in Munich, Germany). Travelling between Munich and Algiers, Zénati’s six-decade-long career ranged from painting, to textile, to interior and fashion design — driven by an anarchic impetus to create. His practice transcends all boundaries of established media, conventions of style, and cultural origins.

Tune
Featuring Beatrice Dillon, Abdullah Miniawy, Christelle Oyiri, Stephen O’Malley, Kali Malone, Lucy Railton, Galya Bisengalieva, Lolina, JJJJJerome Ellis, Emiranda, Toxe, Mechatok, Caterina Barbieri, and Okkyung Lee.

“Tune”, a series of sound residencies, presents monthly artist performances, screenings and installations of solo works and collaborations. The invited artists move across genre, era and influence to explore microtonal compositions, to expand the sonic possibilities of a single instrument and to investigate the finer details of how sound constructs and decomposes time. The programme concentrates on the nature of making and performing sound through collage, narrative-driven works, walls of sound and improvisation.