Exhibitions 2025

Kunsthaus Baselland announces its exhibition program through fall 2025 highlighting the first solo presentation by Eva Lootz (in cooperation with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid) in a German speaking-country, two comprehensive group shows and the competition format Solo Position won by the Swiss Mexican artist Leonardo Bürgi Tenorio. 2025 marks the second year in the award-winning new building by Buchner Bründler Architects.

Activating! The Idea of Action as a Work of Art
Annika Kahrs, Rosalind Nashashibi, Juliette Uzor, Franz Erhard Walther and Doing Fashion HGK Basel FHNW
January 31–March 23, 2025

Is a performance only a performance when it is carried out by a live act? What does “activate” mean in this context? Can visitors’ imaginations also serve as a form of activation? After all, one of our most impressive abilities is to imagine events that are not actually present or happening at the moment that we are envisioning them. All of the invited artists refer to this very moment of activation—whether through actions depicted in film and video, thus making them tangible, or through sound, acoustics, surprising forms and textiles that occupy or even fill the space and encourage these ideas of action. This comprehensive exhibition will be accompanied by a series of live performances and acts that will take place on various dates over the duration of the exhibition, presented by Juliette Uzor and other performers as well as the graduates of the 2025 Doing Fashion program at Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW.

Leonardo Bürgi Tenorio: the paths we walk
Solo Position: An Initiative by the Basel-Landschaft Cultural Promotion Department
January 31–March 23, 2025

In his first solo exhibition, Leonardo Bürgi Tenorio focuses on the history and cultural significance of terrariums. In this era of global unrest and challenges, terrariums and houseplants are currently experiencing a remarkable revival. Creating a micro-habitat within your own four walls offers a controlled and creative environment as well as a meaningful alternative during times of upheaval and uncertainty. In order to explore the phenomenon of terrariums, the Basel-based Swiss Mexican artist takes an extensive look at the colonial history of the object and its continuation into the present. With new visual and olfactory worlds, as well as expanded knowledge and insights, he creates a new interpretation of these habitats and their relevance for our present.

Whispers from Tides and Forests
Caroline Bachmann, Johanna Calle, Lena Laguna Diel, Abi Palmer, Nohemí Pérez, Ana Silva, Julia Steiner, Surma, Liu Yujia, and other artists
April 11–July/August, 2025

This is an exhibition of quiet tones as well as the delicate new stories that we should begin telling in these times of crisis and upheaval. In the face of climate change, landscapes, forests and rivers under threat, and the mass migration caused by the extreme global climatic and political situations that are becoming increasingly apparent, we need to find new narratives that might not be the same as the previous ones. Because, as the professor and anthropologist Anna Tsing recently explained, we should now prepare ourselves to survive without the old stories that could tell us what happens next. The internationally active artists involved in the exhibition facilitate these subtle new narratives that position human beings in a new relationship between space, time and body. They are about a caring, considerate coexistence between people and nature, but also progress and the power of resilience—without dismissing current events. They offer us a glimpse of the world, from South America to Europe, showing us turbulent places and themes of vulnerability and loss, but also trees, forest floors and their mushroom cultures, rivers and landscapes full of beauty, poetry and the future.

Next Generation
Graduation exhibition, Bachelor and Master Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW
August 30–September 14, 2025

Now for the tenth time, the Kunsthaus Baselland and its director Ines Goldbach, together with the Institute Art Gender Nature, Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW and its head Chus Martínez, will be presenting the graduation exhibition of the institute’s bachelor’s and master’s students. Around forty to fifty artists will present new works over the two floors of the Kunsthaus Baselland at Dreispitz, Basel. In order to emphasize the unique nature of a graduation exhibition in a renowned art institution—and to mark the transition from the familiar surroundings of the art academy to the challenges of working as professional artists—the exhibition is co-curated by distinguished guest curators. 

Eva Lootz
In cooperation with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
From September 26, 2025 

While Eva Lootz was one of the leading pioneers of the 1970s, her work is only now being discovered in all its abundance and astonishing relevance: born in Vienna in 1940, the artist has lived in Madrid since the 1960s, choosing to live and work in Spain at a time when the country was ruled by a military dictatorship that remained in power until the mid-1970s. Making art, as Lootz understands it and understood it from the very beginning, was therefore shaped by political resistance and social and private resilience. For Lootz, being political means, more than anything else, looking closely, listening carefully, and understanding what is being said or read. The materials she uses emphasize softness and poetic fluidity—even when they are made of marble or bitumen—while reflecting the origins of their extraction at the same time: salt, sand, water, stone. Her oeuvre includes drawings, sculptures, videos, photographs, (wall) paintings and site-specific interventions. In cooperation with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid and in close collaboration with the artist herself, this exhibition is the first of its kind in a German-speaking country. It is curated by Ines Goldbach and Fernando López.

Director/Curator: Ines Goldbach / Director’s Assistant: Martina Stähli / Communications, Publications and Assistant Curator: Ines Tondar / Organization Office: Salome Tramèr / Education: Leonie Vogt / Intern: Clara Soiron