“I hope this finds you well”

“I hope this finds you well,” Kunstverein Hannover’s 2024–25 program, presents artistic insights and responses to post-pandemic notions of disease and healing as well as aspects of “wellbeing” and “wellness.” While we’re told we have returned to “normal,” the perspective of artists can reveal the pain points between empty promises and experiences of trauma and still-unrealized visions of social cohesion and a more expansive understanding of empathy.

Despite unprecedented advances in medicine and therapy the pandemic has thrown a spotlight on the complexity of the human system, of which biology is only one aspect. Yet artists have long shed light on areas of society, in particular “vulnerable groups,” with innovation, sensitivity, and reflection. For a time, these groups were on everyone's lips and then faded into the shadows again after the official and longed-for end of the pandemic. People yearned to arrive back to “normal.” But what is normality? Renowned Hungarian-Canadian physician Dr. Gabor Maté describes this contradictory drive aptly as the “myth of the normal.” The “normality” of a majority means exclusion per se, and the pandemic cracked open an opportunity for fundamental social change—a chance for magnanimity, for recalibration—that was largely missed.

Kunstverein Hannover’s program focuses on the unique questions that artists ask, and how they allow us to imagine horizons of structural change and solidarities that have not yet become a reality in our world. Especially as right-wing populist forces gain ground in Germany as elsewhere, which zero in on simplification and polarization as key strategies, it is urgent to use the means of art to amplify voices that drive actual change in society: those of artists, who have long explored mycelia, non-human beings, alternative history/histories, hypnosis, olfactory-haptic approaches, aphasia and cancer therapy, prosthetic research, group rituals and collective memory, trauma, play, sport and ableism.

István Csákány: Home Without Address
February 23, 2024–January 19, 2025
For almost a year, István Csákány presents an eight-meter high sculptural work in the east staircase of the Künstlerhaus, telling tales from the nomadic work of many artists, hosting guest presentations, and constantly changing the working and living conditions of contemporary artistic practice.

Academy of Lived Experience Intensive
March 2–April 7, 2024
With Daniel Buren, Emmanuel Tanka Fonta, Christiane Möbus, Studio Wert der Dinge, Ukrainischer Verein Niedersachsen e. V., and University of Hildesheim, among others.

In spring 2024, Kunstverein Hannover dedicates its historic spaces to learning rather than teaching. Encompassing various formats of collaborative knowledge transfer, (artistic) practice, and discourse,  contributors come together to reflect on the Kunstverein's action spaces from a socio-political perspective.

The Myth of Normal. Of Competing and Conceding. 
May 4–July 14, 2024 
Cooperation with Salzburger Kunstverein (AT), Kommunales Kino Hannover, and Cumberlandsche Galerie.
With Emilie L. Gossiaux, Itamar Gov, Nikita Kadan, Marcos Lutyens, Berenice Olmedo, Peter Schloss, and Imogen Stidworthy, among others.

The group exhibition—as part of the arts and culture program of the European Football Championships, for able-bodied people who define themselves as male—explores interdependent questions about what constitutes a society and the relation between community and discourse and the superstructure of society as a whole, which can be uniquely illuminated through artistic practice.

Participating artists present works that deal with the traumas of pain and illness as well as with therapy and healing work, and ultimately with caring and sharing. Here, artistic contributions shed light on aspects of inequality, differing abilities, and forms of solidarity as they grapple with the complexities of ability, mastery, and generosity.

Maté reminds us that social agreements in societies and the “norm” must be understood as interactions that should be renewed bottom-up rather than top-down. The exhibition brings together positions that span an arc between norms (formation) in societies, reflections on healthcare systems, and sport as a symptom of a “normalized” popular practice, among others, posing questions about ability and indulgence, community and society.

In collaboration with Kunstverein Hannover, Salzburger Kunstverein presents the sister exhibition The Myth of Normal: Chronic Contradictions (May 8–June 28, 2024) and co-produces the Performance Program “When the Body Says Yes” with works of Benoît Pieron and Perel, among others.

In collaboration with Hannover’s arthouse cinema and Cumberlandsche Galerie, a program of screenings, performances, hospitality, and public viewing event for the soccer games of the UEFA EURO 2024 takes place in Künstlerhaus Hannover’s historic backyard.

Kunstverein Hannover Award 
August 24–October 6, 2024
With Ole Blank, Lena Marie Emrich, Pablo Schlumberger, Tuğba Şimşek, Catharina Szonn

For the past 40 years, Kunstverein Hannover has run a residency program for young artists. The autumn exhibition presents the newly-produced work of 5 grantees from the last 2 years.

Roee Rosen: A Kafka Companion to Wellness
November 9, 2024–January 12, 2025
In the current political cultural landscape, it seems almost unavoidable to present an artist who does not shy away from difficult themes, but at the same time does not approach them in an instrumentalizing, populist way, robbing them of depth. Roee Rosen’s particular genius is that he does not so much claim a position in the events of the past, but invites us to see past and present events anew through the eyes of the many characters that populate his practice, himself included. This exhibition, Rosen’s first solo exhibition in Germany in almost a decade, offers a rare opportunity to delve deep into his practice, bringing together works from the mid-1990s to today, including new pieces.

Co-curated by Krzysztof Kościuczuk.

Kateryna Lysovenko: Animals
January 31–March 30, 2025
Kunstverein Hannover presents the first larger solo show of Kateryna Lysovenko, who works primarily in painting, drawing, and performance in which ghostly figures, animals, and creatures seemingly borrowed from mythology, from dreams, and memory appear. 

Roman Khimei/Yarema Malashchuk: In absentia
January 31–March 30, 2025
Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk’s first major institutional presentation in Germany centers on the duo’s latest short film, a forensic work entitled Explosions Near The Museum, which documents the local museum in Kherson, looted by Russian troops shortly after they were pushed back by the Ukrainian army in 2022. The exhibition features objects in absentia: telling other stories than those that are (still) here.

The program of Kunstverein Hannover is curated by Christoph Platz-Gallus.

Press contact: Olga Nevzorova, presse@kunstverein-hannover.de