Spring 2025 program

The Kestner Gesellschaft is dedicating its spring 2025 exhibition program to the concept of the passage as a state of transition, journey, and resistance. A passage is not merely a transient space—it is a realm of change, a place of upheaval and disruption. In this state the familiar dissolves and the unknown takes shape. Artists Jack O’Brien, Som Supaparinya, and Göksu Kunak explore how political, economic, and ecological forces shape processes of reconfiguration: in landscapes altered by massive human intervention, in consumer cultures that shape desires and identities, and in cities where migration continually reshapes social and urban structures. The exhibitions demonstrate that passages are not merely spaces of transition but also leave traces—on living beings, ecosystems, objects, and archives—where shifts become visible and inscribe themselves into structures, overlaying or reshaping them.

The Kestner Gesellschaft is increasingly emphasizing its activities in the areas of archives, art education, and accompanying programs. A central element of this initiative is the new accessible space Passage, created by architect Assaf Kimmel as an open place for exchange, discourse, and learning.

Jack O’Brien: Cue the Cue
First Floor

With Cue the Cue, Jack O’Brien is presenting his first institutional solo exhibition in Germany, exploring the intersections of consumer culture, desire, and queer identity within capitalist power structures. By transforming found objects such as magazines, pianos, chairs, and industrial materials like plastic films and mesh fabrics, O’Brien creates sculptural rearrangements whose surfaces and tactile qualities evoke a latent desire within the objects themselves. His new site-specific, large-scale installation features a theater stage with 65 wooden chairs from a disbanded dance company, balanced by semi-transparent spheres. The installation references processes of deconstruction, minimalism, and the shifting relationship between stage and audience. O’Brien strips the stage structure of its function as a stable space of representation, opening it to a reading in which identity oscillates between hyper-presence and invisibility. The exhibition title alludes to a loop of staging and repetition, in which the design of everyday objects shapes desire and shifts identity between visibility and withdrawal—a mechanism that O’Brien exposes. 

Alongside the exhibition, the first catalog of Jack O’Brien’s work will be published by Bierke Verlag.

Som Supaparinya: The Rivers They Don’t See
Ground Floor

Som Supaparinya’s first institutional solo exhibition in Germany focuses on rivers as politically, socially, and ecologically charged landscapes. Supaparinya’s works analyze how economic expansion, governmental interventions, and river regulation and infrastructure development projects not only alter the courses of rivers but also deeply impact local populations. Central to the exhibition is the video work The Rivers They Don’t See (2024), which reveals the interconnections between water usage, natural resource extraction for industrial development, and ecological consequences. Using the Ping River as an example—whose course has increasingly been altered by economic interests and state interventions—Supaparinya makes visible the intertwined realities of environmental destruction, political control, and human resilience. In her artistic practice as a cartographer, she explores the complex social history of Thailand and Southeast Asia, employing a documentary approach that integrates visual and auditory media. Her works demonstrate that landscapes are not neutral spaces but sites of political negotiation, in which ecological interventions remain inseparably linked to colonial history and capitalist expansion to this day.

Co-curated by Natalie Keppler in collaboration with the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.

Göksu Kunak: Don’t Let Them Shoot the Kite
Goseriede, Facade, Cafe

With Don’t Let Them Shoot the Kite, Göksu Kunak will present a performative intervention that spans the public space outside the building, the facade installation, and the interior of the Kestner Gesellschaft. Kunak’s performance engages with the diaspora from Turkey in Hanover, drawing on elements from sound, urban choreography, and symbolism to reflect on social structures of adaptation, control, and visibility. The proximity of the Kestner Gesellschaft to numerous Turkish community centers, shops, and meeting places serves as a starting point for an investigation into belonging, experiences of migration, and social community within the urban space. Kunak addresses the politics of time, hybrid textual forms, and the performative shaping of contemporary lifestyles that oscillate between cultural attributions and individual agency. The exhibition’s title refers to the film Don’t Let Them Shoot the Kite (Uçurtmayı Vurmasınlar, 1989) and the novella of the same title (1986) by Feride Çiçekoğlu.

For the opening, Göksu Kunak will present a site-specific performance on Goseriede Square in front of the Kestner Gesellschaft.

Passage
Architecture by Assaf Kimmel 
Exhibition Hall 5

Exhibition Hall 5, newly designed by architect Assaf Kimmel and titled Passage, will serve as a transitional space for collective exchange. Conceived as a place of movement and interaction, it invites visitors to engage with shifting perspectives, layered histories, and evolving dialogues. It connects art education, workshops, and events with an ever-changing presentation of editions and archival materials from the Kestner Gesellschaft. In light of its historical responsibility and connection to the international avant-garde as well as its exhibition activities, the Kestner Gesellschaft will use this new architectural setting to question conventional forms of educational work, promote accessibility, and experiment with progressive formats. A new display will make archival materials accessible, including internal records, photographs, posters, and other ephemera from over 100 years of institutional history. 

Passage will remain an evolving structure, continuously shaped through dialogue with artists, visitors, and experts.

The spring 2025 exhibition program is curated by Alexander Wilmschen, Interim Director and Curator of the Kestner Gesellschaft.