Annual program 2023

Zhanna Kadyrova: Daily Bread—A First Retrospective 
January 28–April 9, 2023

Kunstverein Hannover (est. 1832) presents the first retrospective of Ukrainian artist Zhanna Kadyrova. Spanning two decades of artistic practice, Daily Bread includes historical as well as new works, all of which were created in Ukraine, with a special focus on artistic production in the war phases of 2014 and 2022 until today.

The exhibition is organized in cooperation with PinchukArtCentre and is scheduled to be on view in a different form in the summer at the institution’s premises in Kyiv. Not only since the beginning of the war, it is the leading institution to support, promote, and represent Ukrainian contemporary art and artists inside as well as outside of Ukraine.

In collaboration with the Foundation Life & Environment | Heinrich Böll Foundation Lower Saxony, the Network Remembrance and Future in the Hannover region, and the ZeitZentrum Zivilcourage, two discursive events take place in February and March to facilitate a broader discussion about the role of art and civil society in conditions of aggression and repression. Kadyrova also wants the voices of her fellow activists, artists, and community members to be heard. This will be made possible by online conversations with filmmakers Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk as well as artist and writer Yevgenia Belorusets.

Agnieszka Kurant: Uncomputables 
May 6–July 9, 2023

In her artistic practice, Polish-born conceptual artist Agnieszka Kurant investigates the phenomenon of collective intelligence, nonhuman intelligences (from bacteria and slime molds to artificial intelligence), the future of labor and creativity, and the extractivist economy of digital surveillance capitalism.

In her first in-depth institutional solo show in Germany, the artist revisits earlier works considering the impact of technology on notions of individuality and authenticity and exploring plural subjectivity and the “self” as a multitude of agents—a polyphony involving minerals, microbes, viruses, and algorithms. Kurant creates conditions in which unpredictable, unstable forms, assemblages and amalgamations emerge or crystallize from a complex system: millions of molecules, a colony of bacteria or termites, a social movement, or a crowd of digital ghost-workers. 

Kurant’s new project is informed by the history of cybernetics, automation, biosemiotics, perpetual motion machines, and alchemy. Hannover’s identity as the “Expo”-City, dormant since the last world fair took place there in 2000, perfectly embodies the techno-optimistic assumptions of pre-millennial thinking. The exhibition brings together new aspects of Kurant’s practice in light of the aged projections of these necro futures—former fictional and utopian leaps, which quickly became steep jumps into neoliberal pitfalls. 

Akinbode Akinbiyi: Sometimes to be lost is to be found, and to be found is to be lost anew 
November 11, 2023–January 21, 2024

Akinbode Akinbiyi has worked as a photographer, poet, and writer for over 50 years. The son of Nigerian parents, he lived in Oxford, Lagos, Heidelberg, and Munich before moving to West Berlin. Self-taught, he belongs to a generation that works by hand and does photography physically, as a peripatetic observer whose sensitivity to the moment makes up the magic of everyday life that we see in his work.

On his walks through the streets of Bamako, Berlin, Cairo, Dakar, Johannesburg, São Paolo, and other megacities—always equipped with an analog, medium format twin-lens camera—Akinbiyi explores social structures, uncovers the hidden, and makes the unseen visible. His work records the everyday in an age of global mobility and rapidly circulating images through a uniquely poetic view of quotidian moments. 

From spring 2023, Akinbiyi will wander through Hannover, giving the “Expo City” another form of exposition—exposure. Kunstverein Hannover will also organize workshops with schools and young people under the artist’s direction. In addition, an installation in public space will be presented before the exhibition. 

Daniel Buren
From May 2023

The first artist invited to spend time in Hannover and develop an artistic project within the framework of the newly-established Academy of Lived Experience is the legendary conceptual artist Daniel Buren. Buren’s contribution represents an exceptionally fruitful example of the Academy’s commitment to knowledge transfer in that it is not the artist’s first engagement with Kunstverein Hannover. In 1991 Buren developed Wo? Was? Wie?, an exhibition in all rooms of Kunstverein Hannover that took the historical architecture into account with a specific focus on light and viewing angles. 

Local engagement
Kunstverein Hannover has been committed to the regional art scene from the beginning. The traditional Fall Exhibition, the biggest survey show on the art scene in Lower Saxony and Bremen, celebrates its 90th iteration in autumn (August 12–October 22, 2023). Kunstverein Hannover has also hosted and supported emerging artists for decades. Three grants and a residency program in collaboration with a local real estate partner are awarded biannually; the residency program celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2023. 

New initiatives 2023–2027
Under the new direction of Christoph Platz-Gallus, Kunstverein Hannover introduces a number of initiatives above and beyond its annual programming.

Green Kunstverein is an overarching sustainability strategy that aims to assess and mitigate the environmental impact of Kunstverein Hannover’s activities in diverse areas ranging from a reconsideration of printed materials to energy consumption to sustainable collaborations and a focus on local supply chains. 

Despite the fact that Kunstverein Hannover is one of the oldest German Kunstvereins, it has never housed a permanent archive. The Living Archive research and education project will reactivate its institutional legacy by professionalizing, cataloging, and partly digitizing materials that trace the Kunstverein’s history, with the intention of making the archive accessible to scholars and researchers for the first time. 

With the founding of the Academy of Lived Experience, Kunstverein Hannover aims to build a bridge to the principles of mentorship embodied in academies, making possible an inspiring exchange between artists of different experience levels and backgrounds who create a community of learning.

New visual identity by Grupa Ee, Ljubljana/Berlin
From 2023, Kunstverein Hannover opens a new chapter with a new visual identity conceived by design collective Grupa Ee (Mina Fina, Damjan Ilić, and Ivian Kan Mujezinović), based in Ljubljana and Berlin.

Press contact: Olga Nevzorova, presse [​at​] kunstverein-hannover.de