The SCHIRN in 2026

January 29 – April 26, 2026

For over a decade, Bárbara Wagner (b. 1980) & Benjamin de Burca (b. 1975) have been creating video works and installations in collaboration with cultural movements and collective practices experienced outside of the established circuits of contemporary art. In their works, the artist duo examine artistic expression, cultural resistance, and the negotiation of identity. The film installations in the exhibition depict contemporary trans-generational scenes with a strong local accent, each of which emerged as youth movements during the 1970s and 1980s and went on to create and shape autonomous cultural and/or musical structures and systems of reference.

At the core of their first comprehensive solo exhibition in Germany is a specially developed new production focusing on the hardcore scene in Germany, in particular Straight Edge (“sXe” for short), a movement which emerged on the East Coast of the United States as a “clean” counterculture within the post-hardcore punk of the 1980s.
Within the SCHIRN, Wagner & de Burca position these scenes alongside other music movements: with the Brega scene from Recife, which arose in northeast Brazil in the 1970s, and Canadians of Afro-Caribbean descent from the first or second generation who, in an act of self-empowerment, appropriated the public space of Toronto’s subway.

Wagner & de Burca’s audiovisual works highlight pressing sociopolitical issues within the performers’ communities and explore how people find a voice through the cultural expressions they identify with. Their productions are characterized by collaboration, with those portrayed in their films actively participating in the design of script, set, music, choreography, and mise-en-scène.

Curator Katharina Dohm (SCHIRN)
Curatorial Assistent Cornelia Eisendle

June 11 – September 20, 2026

The major summer exhibition presents artworks from the last ten years that explore the cognitive, psychological, political, and ecological dimensions of artificial intelligence (AI). AI technologies are fundamentally changing the ways in which images are created, processed, disseminated, described, and viewed. Their influence on visual culture and contemporary art practice is among the most visible phenomena in this field, which is dominated by often opaque technical processes.

The wide-ranging themed exhibition will occupy both exhibition halls at the SCHIRN with around 40 works, including video installations, graphic works, sculptures, and photographs. The show will examine a broad spectrum, addressing not only resources and environmental factors but also aspects of perception, machine vision, and facial and emotional recognition. Works by 25 international artists—including Hito Steyerl, Kate Crawford & Vladan Joler, and Agnieszka Kurant—address microwork, the establishment of alternative historical narratives, as well as visions of the future. Further aspects explored include so-called “AI slop” and “slopaganda” (the use of AI-generated images as a new form of political propaganda). Moreover, a series of time capsules—conceived as small cabinets of curiosities—links the present to the past within the exhibition, thereby embedding current changes brought about by new technologies within a broader historical context.

Curators Antonio Somaini (Jeu de Paume, Paris) in collaboration with Katharina Dohm (SCHIRN)
Curatorial Assistent Cornelia Eisendle

October 1, 2026 – January 10, 2027

The figurative sculptures of Anna Hulačová (b. 1984) combine influences from Surrealism, Soviet Brutalism, and Czech folk art to create an autonomous artistic cosmos. The SCHIRN presents the artist’s first solo exhibition in Germany on the occasion of the Czech Republic’s role as Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Hulačová, who grew up on a farm, creates art rooted in her deep affinity with plants and animals.

The artist explores the relationship between humans and nature from an eco-feminist perspective. In her artworks, she addresses the loss of biodiversity, the decline of insects, and the consequences of industrial agriculture. The bee becomes a central metaphor and co-producer of her art, symbolizing collective labor, ecological crisis, and mystical immortality. In partnership with her own colonies of bees, she develops hybrid creatures and faceless science-fiction–like figures, in which concrete and honeycomb, organic and technoid, as well as nature and machine are fused. Hulačová’s utopian-apocalyptic visions are permeated by concern for the future of our environment while simultaneously expressing a poetic imagination.

CURATOR Martina Weinhart (SCHIRN)
Curatorial Assistent Theresa Dettinger