The SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT presents the first major solo exhibition in Germany by Bárbara Wagner (b. 1980) & Benjamin de Burca (b. 1975). For over a decade, the artist duo who live in Brazil have been creating video works and installations in dialogue with other artists and collectives. In their collaborative films, Wagner & de Burca focus primarily on cultural movements and collective practices that take place outside the established spheres of contemporary art.

The show combines three audiovisual pieces created in different contexts: “Future of Yesterday” (Germany, 2026), “RISE” (Canada, 2018), and “Estás vendo coisas / You are seeing things” (Brazil, 2016). It portrays local, multigenerational music scenes that emerged in the early 1980s as youth movements outside the mainstream. These scenes developed independent cultural or musical structures and reference systems and are now being reinterpreted by a younger generation.

The exhibition centers on the specially developed new production “Future of Yesterday” (2026). This video installation explores the current hardcore scene in Germany and, in particular, straight edge (or “sXe” for short)—a movement that began on the East Coast of the United States as a “clean” counterculture within the hardcore punk scene.

“RISE” (2018) is about first- and secondgeneration Canadians of Afro-Caribbean descent. In an act of self-empowerment, they use elements of hip-hop and rap to artistically occupy the public space of the Toronto subway.

One of Wagner & de Burca’s first works, “Estás vendo coisas / You are seeing things” (2016), in turn explores Brega music from the Brazilian city of Recife, in northeastern Brazil.

A defining characteristic of Wagner & de Burca’s artistic process is their collaborative approach: the groups portrayed are actively involved in the creation of script, set design, music, choreography, and production. Their audiovisual works are a compelling examination of pressing sociopolitical issues within the respective communities of the performers; they draw on cultural forms of expression with which these communities identify and use to find their public voice. The exhibition takes its title from a poem in the film “RISE”. The works on display frame the subway tunnel as a physical structure in urban space, while at the same time allowing it to serve as a metaphor for transformative processes involving cultural resistance, the negotiation of identity, and artistic expression.