Contemporary since 1818
February 13–June 14, 2026
Karlsruhe 76133
Germany
Hours: Tuesday and Thursday–Sunday 11am–6pm
Wednesday 11am–8pm
T +4972128226
info@badischer-kunstverein.de
Anna Barham: delirious mantra
In a digital context that seduces us into believing in seamless and instantaneous communication, the bodily friction in language becomes a form of interference that must be smoothed away. Systems such as automatic speech recognition are characterised by hegemonic notions about which voices and which linguistic forms are worth recognising.
Anna Barham (b. 1974, Sutton Coldfield)—who presents her first major solo exhibition in Germany at Badischer Kunstverein—resists this smoothening of language and instead pushes the untranslatable and the irreducible into sharp focus. Her practice links language with the visual and the performative, crystallising associative meanings that might be inherent in a word, yet emerge only through the displacement of its individual elements.
Barham treats language as both plastic and sonic material and the exhibition is filled with sounds and voices. Hands form and reform letters from geometric shapes; text snakes through the galleries, around and over the institutional architecture and its fittings; a large format UV printer generates words and images; and the incessant call of a cicada sounds from the furthest space.
Since 2013, Barham has worked with the error-prone nature of speech recognition, to produce new meanings, and to foreground the materiality of the voice and its disruptions. For the artist, it is precisely these textures and mishearings which hold the relational potential of the voice. In her new sound work, ZYX (2026) she considers the errors produced by automatic speech recognition as hallucinations. What initially seems like a misheard text is in reality a new way of thinking and writing—in radical opposition to automatisation, standardisation and authority.
Curated by Anja Casser.
The exhibition receives support from the Innovationsfonds Kunst (Innovation Fund for the Arts) of the Ministry of Science, Research and Arts of the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg.
Contemporary since 1818
The project contemporary since 1818 in the atrium of the Badischer Kunstverein serves as both a place to meet and a space for events. It responds to crises and political developments, whether global or local, including cultural cutbacks and the resulting precarious situation confronted by many institutions, as well as increasing societal polarisation.
As democratic, political and educational-related institutions, Kunstvereine (art associations) still provide an important space for building networks and promoting solidarity—today in particular. Since its founding in 1818, the Badischer Kunstverein has been a platform for exhibiting and debating contemporary art, a space where artistic practices and political questions come together and achieve visibility:
Where and how can we come together? How can institutions maintain their abilities to act in such precarious conditions? What forms of complicity are possible, and how can strategies be developed for cultural, artistic and political work based on solidarity?
contemporary since 1818 invites visitors to spend time together, to share knowledge and to develop (local) collaborative relationships. The format interconnects the historical continuities of the Kunstvereine with present-day challenges and explores spaces of possibility for collective action.
Information about the contemporary since 1818 programme is constantly updated and published on our website, in our newsletter and on Instagram.
