Whispers

Melike Kara’s solo exhibition Whispers is presented as part of the 9th Triennial of Photography Hamburg. It conceives photography not as a static image, but as a circulating, ever-changing medium of memory, identity and transformation. For the Kunsthaus Hamburg, the artist creates a large-scale installation in which, for the first time, she burns photographs from her own archive and, once turned into ash, integrates them into the space. What remains are traces – fragments of images eluding fixation. Building on Melike Kara’s long-standing exploration of her Kurdish heritage, the exhibition focuses on belonging and transformation. Visitors enter a fragile garden: paintings cover the floor; images made from coffee grounds permeate the space like sedimented traces of the past. Plants grow in certain areas; water collects in basins. The result is a sensory space that invites us to consider identity as something that is in a state of constant flux.

The summer exhibition 2026 by the City Curator Hamburg – FIRE. From the Cosmos to the Commons – in collaboration with the St. Nikolai Memorial is dedicated to the element of Fire, the apocalypse and the repair. FIRE presents a series of public art commissions of both Hamburg-based as well as the international artists, dealing with the political, ecological, and spiritual reading of fire in the times of political urgency. It addresses the current pervasive feeling of impending catastrophe, asking, how to turn poison into medicine, confusion into strength, loss into renewal and resilience.

Running concurrently with Melike Kara’s exhibition, the Kunsthaus Hamburg presents an installation by Andrey Klassen at the Admiralitätstraße 75 project space as part of FIRE. The exhibitions by Melike Kara, Andrey Klassen and FIRE. From the Cosmos to the Commons, all of which address the destructive as well as regenerative forces of this element, will be explored in relation to one another during a joint guided tour.