Cold as Ice: Coldness in Art and Society

Coldness is understood as low temperatures out-side as well as emotionlessness, missing empathy, and a lack of solidarity. In this context, coldness can become a means of artistic expression for depicting and criticizing social conditions. But what is the situation today with regard to the idea of directing an artistic focus onto the current situation with regard to coldness in society? What images do international artists discover with respect to the overlapping global crises with which we find ourselves confronted? With respect to discrimination and destruction, lies and hate, and thus processes of dwindling solidarity which manifest themselves within violent power structures and determine our social interconnection?

The artistic works in Cold as Ice: Coldness in Art and Society explore the existential dimension of coldness. Warmth is a fundamental human need, the prerequisite for health and well-being. Its absence has devastating consequences: a lack of social cohesion, increasing alienation, states of indifference and loneliness, acts of violence. The exhibition presents artistic images of a continuously chilling social climate; it brings together works which thematize (politically) frosty times but also call for resistance and evoke the counter-image of change and solidarity.

Artists: Bani Abidi, Kader Attia, Véra Marie Deubner, Nezaket Ekici, Dani Gal, Mark Grotjahn, Shilpa Gupta, David Hammons, Anna Jermolaewa, Kirsten Justesen, Šejla Kamerić, Jana Sophia Nolle, Philippe Parreno, Bunny Rogers, Inuuteq Storch, Walter Swennen, Sung Tieu, Klaus Weber, Guido van der Werve, Hannah Wolf

A catalog featuring an essay by the curators Ingo Clauß and Janneke de Vries, several work texts, interviews with Bunny Rogers and Kirsten Justesen, and numerous illustrations, will be available in February 2026. Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Köln.

Funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation). Funded by the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Comissioner for Culture and the Media. Funded by Waldemar Koch Stiftung. Supported by Sparkasse Bremen. Media partner: Bremen Zwei + Rausgegangen.

Director: Janneke de Vries

Press contact: Jan Harriefeld, presse@weserburg.de / T + 49 (0) 421 5983921