Current

28.03. – 24.05.2026

Daniel Hopp

Fictional Healing

Daniel Hopp, Fictional Healing, 2025/26 (film still), Courtesy the artist / ania maria wanda

Daniel Hopp
Fictional Healing
28.3.–24.5.2026

Places of transit such as train stations or public squares are sites where social divisions may become particularly visible, for example, Leopoldplatz in Berlin or the area around the Drob Inn, a contact and counselling centre providing drug consumption rooms not far from Hamburg Central Station. Addiction, homelessness and acute survival strategies collide here with urban mobility, shopping, art and culture. Precisely at this crystallisation point, Daniel Hopp’s work sets in.

At the centre of his first institutional solo exhibition is the multi-part film installation Fictional Healing. In this work, the artist questions stigmatizing narratives associated with addiction and introduces images of care that open up new scope for action. Blending humour and seriousness, the immersive installation forms a resonant whole in which collective imagination enables self-empowerment. Based on his own experiences, Daniel Hopp developed documentary and (docu-)fictional film scenes in relationship-oriented processes together with people affected by addiction. Their personal histories, dreams and fantasies were explored in interviews and subsequently interpreted by amateur and professional actors. In addition, a series of video portraits provides insights into the protagonists’ lives.

Within a monumental spatial architecture, films and AI-generated images converge to create a powerful experience, borne by a soundscape that unfolds across the entire hall. The exhibition highlights social issues and reveals how reality, documentation, collective imagination and cinematic fiction can become intertwined – resulting in a work that is both touching and unsettling, and raises questions about responsibility, representation and the necessary conditions for participation.

Curated by Anna Nowak

Exhibition text

The film Fictional Healing, created especially for the exhibition, was produced by Ania Kolyszko (creative producer, ania maria wanda).

Kindly supported by:

05.02. – 03.05.2026

Whisper Down the Lane –
Carolina Lehan

Installation views: Whisper Down the Lane – Carolina Lehan, Kunsthaus Hamburg 2026; Photos: Sarah Thielsen

Whisper Down the Lane –
Carolina Lehan

5 February – 3 May 2026
Kunsthaus foyer

Moving accross planes of time, Carolina Lehan’s installation For the Time Being draws on the myth of the siren, in which histories of homeland, female bonds and lesbian as well as queer partnership intersect with forms of erasure and resilience. The work functions both as a physical anchor and as a conceptual axis between the form of a love letter and the archetype of the siren.

In their earliest Greek appearance, sirens were hybrid beings, part woman, part bird, who inhabited coastal rocks and liminal spaces. In the Middle Ages, their image gradually transformed into that of the mermaid. This transformation reflects broader perceptions of femininity shaped through myth and archetype, in which the female figure is repeatedly cast as frightening or dangerous, before being altered into a more pleasant, seductive form. In For the Time Being, a siren and a mermaid appear together as a pair. They are presented as companions entwined in song and pathos, offering a renewal of their mythic presence not as temptresses but as witnesses to the enduring complexity of love. Their presence evokes centuries of close, intimate relationships between women that have often been marginalized, distorted, or erased.

The central sculpture is accompanied by two smaller elements. They resemble pieces of a torn note whose text is no longer legible. The inspiration for this was a love letter from Germany, dating to 1943, that Lehan encountered while visiting the Jewish Museum in Berlin. It was written by a Jewish woman to her German female lover, detailing the vows she makes to her. Throughout history, love letters have served as testimonies to intimate human relationships, bearing traces of their historical, political and social conditions. They offer a close look at individuals‘ day-to-day lives, their emotions and most private thoughts. Interweaving mythical and historical notions, Lehan’s installation unfolds like a love letter that was never written: a gesture tenderly offered but never fully delivered, nor definitively answered.

In the experimental and communicative exhibition format Whisper Down the Lane, the roles and functions of hosting and being hosted become fluid: in line with the eponymous children’s game, the exhibiting artists themselves choose the next person. With the project, the Kunsthaus transfers part of the curatorial responsibility to the artists themselves, with the aim of creating alternative institutional modes of access and rendering local network structures visible both in terms of personal ties and with regard to artistic approaches. So far, works by Jaewon Kim, Fritz Lehmann, Altay Tuz, Pia Pospischil, Luzia Cruz, Laurel Chokoago and Cho Ari have been shown as part of Whisper Down the Lane.

Carolina Lehan (*1992) holds a Master of Fine Arts from HFBK, Hamburg in 2025 and a Bachelor from Bezalel Academy of Arts & Design, Jerusalem. Her work has been exhibited at Levantehaus Gallery, Hamburg (2025); Frappant Gallery, Hamburg (2025), The Lobby Art Space, Tel Aviv-Yafo (2024); Gruppe Motto, Hamburg (2024); Atelier Shemi, Kabri (2023) and Barbur Gallery, Jerusalem (2021) among others. She lives and works in Hamburg.

Thursday, 5 February 2026, 6 pm
Opening
in the context of Panorama XIX with A.K. Klosowski & Junbo Huang

04.04.2024 – 01.03.2030

Katharina Duve

My Hand Seeks the Way

Image 1-3: Installation view: Katharina Duve – My Hand Seeks the Way, Kunsthaus Hamburg 2024, Photos: Antje Sauer
Image 4: Nina Rippel, Der geflüsterte Film (film still)

Katharina Duve
My Hand Seeks the Way

From 4 April 2024
Kunsthaus foyer

Situated between the street and the exhibition space, the foyer of the Kunsthaus is a place of transition; a threshold where modes of perception shift and questions about accessibility become evident. Following on from that observation, the Hamburg-based artist Katharina Duve has designed a new work for the stairs of the space.

My Hand Seeks the Way (2024) draws on an experimental film by Nina Rippel from 1992, which deals with the richness of human sensory impressions based on the perceptual world of blind people. Quotes from Rippel’s Der geflüsterte Film (“The Whispered Film”), her text Das Nicht-Sichtbare als Evidenz – Betrachtungen einer filmischen Praxis (“The Non-visible as Evidence – Reflections on a Cinematic Practice”) as well as poetic reflections by Katharina Duve herself were flocked onto eight seating elements made from felt in Braille and black letter. Thus, the work invites people with and without visual impairments to engage in an exchange about the complexity of perception through touch. Because not seeing does not mean perceiving less, but rather referring to an alternative spectrum of perceptions.

 Katharina Duve (*1980, Schwerin, GER) works in the fields of film, costume and performance. She is part of the filmmakers’ group Auge Altona, a collaborator of the music group Deichkind and a member of the performance collective geheimagentur. Since 2022, she has been a professor of Time-based Media at HAW Hamburg. Her artistic works have been shown at the Falckenberg Collection (2023), the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (most recently in 2022), the Tate Modern, London (2017) and Brut, Vienna (2017), among others. She lives and works in Hamburg.

11.11.2023 – 31.12.2026

Jil Lahr

Sticky Business

Installation view: Jil Lahr. Sticky Business, Kunsthaus Hamburg 2023, Photos: Antje Sauer

Jil Lahr
Sticky Business

From 11 November 2023
Kunsthaus Hamburg

Like in the cabinets of curiosities from the early phase of the museum history, Jil Lahr mixes objects of different origins and purposes to create space-related installations, drawing on an extensive collection. Removed from their original settings, the objects of global everyday life trigger new associations, which often reveal the bizarre and humorous nature of massproduced items. By taking them out of their conventional context of use, the artist addresses Western consumerism and refers to entertainment culture.

For the toilets of the Kunsthaus, Jil Lahr has developed the permanent installation Sticky Business. She intuitively redesigned the rooms using stickers that depict stones from her own archive. The natural objects, charged with personal memories, float in space and provide a wry commentary on the functional interior.