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Iris Touliatou: Shifts
September 19–November 23, 2025
Iris Touliatou develops her works in relation to the infrastructures and processes—spatial, administrative, linguistic—that are inherent to the site of exhibition. Her solo exhibition Shifts at Kunstverein München, her most extensive in Germany to date, is conceived as a site-responsive constellation of scenes that position the institutional framework both as backdrop and as co-constitutive material. In this way, the exhibition anchors itself within the rhythms and procedures of the Kunstverein, at the same time expanding them. Composed as protocols, Touliatou’s works reveal the mechanisms that govern organizations and their actors, while extending beyond the procedural to questions of affect, labor, and language.
At the core of Touliatou’s practice lies a kind of material and immaterial intervention, aligning with Kunstverein München’s commitment to rethinking its own functions and histories. “Object/scenes,” a term borrowed from Lauren Berlant, turn the association into both object and host, and its actors into both subject and host. They examine the artist’s own conditions of possibility, shifting constellations of intentions and permissions, and entangled infrastructures—including the neighboring Deutsches Theatermuseum; ongoing negotiations with the landlord (the Bavarian Administration of Palaces, Gardens, and Lakes); points of intersection with the institution’s publics; and its conditions of visibility, social relations, production, and funding unfolding in real time. Operating from within while leaning outward, Touliatou mobilizes infrastructural thinking to probe how forms of labor, class, and citizenship appear, circulate, or are withheld within institutional frameworks.
With a change in directorship imminent and the current curatorial team preparing its final exhibition, Touliatou’s work navigates a shifting terrain of civic and structural negotiation. In this context, Kunstverein München is shaped not only by what is presented, but by how presentation is made possible, namely through the politics of time, resources, and attention.
Schaufenster
The onsite and online series Schaufenster continues on September 19 with Joyce Joumaa’s video Merging, Dissecting, Collecting. The work interrogates the concept of the reversed gaze. Employing the binocular viewfinder as visual anchor—historically a colonial instrument—the work juxtaposes footage shot in Istanbul, Turkey and Tripoli, Lebanon to revisit the history of colonization by the Ottoman Empire and how this imperial legacy is constructed, interpreted, and mediated in contemporary Lebanese pedagogical frameworks. The Schaufenster series simultaneously presents video works in the two permanently accessible spaces of the institution—the window display at the public park adjacent to the Kunstverein, and the website. After running from 2019 to 2021, and again since 2024, the program will conclude at the end of this year.
Writers Residency
The Writers Residency was initiated in 2020 and has since welcomed authors and critics, as well as artists whose work is grounded in writing. The forthcoming resident from October through December 2025 is author and director Dîlan Z. Çapan. Her literary and artistic practice operates between scenic-essayistic poetry and drama, and their realization in theatrical and exhibition spaces, as well as in filmic and performative formats. With this iteration, the residency program comes to a close. Over the past five years, it has hosted thirteen residents, among them Aristotelis Nikolas Mochloulis, manuel arturo abreu, Laura McLean-Ferris, Joshua Leon, Taylor Le Melle, Quinn Latimer, Studio for Propositional Cinema, Alexandra Symons Sutcliffe, and Mahan Moalemi.
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This program marks the conclusion of the current curatorial team’s tenure at Kunstverein München, which began in September 2019. Since then, we have realized seventeen solo exhibitions, two group exhibitions, the Archive Space, a three-part summer school, the institution’s 200-year anniversary, ten publications, a range of additional printed matter, a writers residency, a production residency, and numerous other formats including concerts, performances, readings, screenings, discussions, and many other things besides. All this has been held, informed, and carried by the commitment of many: our members, publics, collaborators, and supporters, but above all, the artists with whom we had the privilege to work and think alongside. We are deeply grateful to everyone who has been part of making this both possible and meaningful.
Director: Maurin Dietrich
Curator: Gloria Hasnay
Assistant Curator: Lucie Pia
Head of Administration: Julia Breun
Executive Assistant: Pia Horras
Archivist: Leona Koldehoff
Visitors Service, Bookshop: Senta Gallant
Visitors Service, Social Media: Chalo Schwaiger
Federal Volunteer: Anna Clara Linsel, Camilla Dehen
Interns: Lisa Haarmann, Henriette Leyde, Salomé Cameron
Head of Installation: Jonas von Ostrowski, Ivo Rick, Pauline Weertz
Head Technician: Christian Eisenberg
Installation Team: Jan Erbelding, Linus Schuierer, Tobias Schulz, Luis Traxler, Simon Wenz
Graphic Design: Enver Hadzijaj
For further information, please contact our press office or visit our website.
