Fall programme

This September, the KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art in Berlin will open four new exhibitions as part of Berlin Art Week 2026: Mischa Kuball. boiler house (Kesselhaus), Kira Freije. Between Sunlight (Maschinenhaus M1), NEOZOON. together (M1 VideoSpace), and Thu-Van Tran. Write As Beasts Scream at Night (Maschinenhaus M2). 

Later this month, Xavier Le Roy's work Temporary Title, 2026 – In the Middle, Somewhat Rehearsed will be on view at the Maschinenhaus M0.

Discover current information on the KINDL accompanying events program here.

Mischa Kuball: boiler house
September 13, 2026–May 30, 2027 
Kesselhaus / Curator: Kathrin Becker 

Conceptual artist Mischa Kuball (* 1959 in Düsseldorf, lives in Düsseldorf) uses the medium of light to explore architectural spaces as well as social and political discourse. In his projects, he reflects on sociocultural structures and creates interventions that emphasise or reinterpret contexts of architectural history. For the KINDL’s striking Kesselhaus, Kuball is developing boiler house, a site-specific work that connects the present with the past. 

At its centre is a system of rotating mirrors that render the emptiness of the space perceptible at different speeds: slow rotation seems to expand the space, while rapid rotation shatters it into fleeting splinters. Through the movement of these reflections alone, a space emerges in which emptiness is not a state but a dynamic process. The space extends through the rows of tall windows into the exterior of the KINDL: what appears inside as a fragile architecture of reflection becomes, outside, a public figure of light—a membrane between the institution and its neighbourhood.

For the opening, the installation is activated through sound and performance, with interventions by Severin Black and Abi Asisa. The opening event is supported by Carhartt WIP.

Kira Freije: Between Sunlight
September 13, 2026–February 21, 2027 
Maschinenhaus M1 / Curator: Laura Smith

In Between Sunlight, a community of sculptural figures have been brought together by British artist Kira Freije (* 1985 in London, lives in London, shortlisted for this year’s Turner Prize). Freije’s figures are united by a deep sense of kinship, while as individual beings they remain absorbed in their own thoughts or imaginings. The installation suggests fragments of a story—there are interactions between the figures that are celebratory, loving, grieving, guiding, resting. Often, fabrics and found materials complete her materially layered scenes. However, Freije leaves the scene deliberately open to allow each of us to react with our own understanding and ideas.

To create her life-sized figures, Freije first casts her hands and feet in aluminium. She then builds her work from the feet up, welding together metal strips to create her forms—similar to drawing a pencil outline. Freije adds faces, or fragments of faces, cast from important people in her life. When building her communities, one figure, usually formed early in the making process, acts as an anchor in the group. Other figures form around it, creating a feeling that the characters rely upon one another, and capturing the very human need to seek companionship. 

NEOZOON: together
September 13, 2026–February 21, 2027 
M1 VideoSpace / Curator: Magdalena Mai

NEOZOON describe themselves as an ecofeminist art collective and work primarily with film, video installation, and artistic intervention in public space. Their works revolve around sociological questions regarding speciesism and unmask the often absurd power relations between humans and animals, as well as between humans themselves—driven by competition, rivalry, and fantasies of superiority. 

For their presentation at the KINDL, NEOZOON have developed an entirely new work: together interrogates the male-dominated human narrative and questions civilisational progress from settlement through the acquisition of property to its defence. Was the emergence of property, hierarchies, and patriarchal structures a historical necessity, or does it rest on a Eurocentric narrative? NEOZOON weave together archival film footage and other found footage from YouTube channels into a rhythmic, dynamic montage that deliberately decouples image from sound. The resulting collage feels at once familiar and unsettling. My land, my property, my border—while the film, with its blend of irony and humour, lays bare the bitter depths of coexistence, it simultaneously reaches for alternative visions of the future. “Together we could help each other.” Wouldn’t we be happier?

Thu-Van Tran: Write As Beasts Scream at Night
September 13, 2026–February 14, 2027 
Maschinenhaus M2 / Curators: Kathrin Becker & Magdalena Mai

Thu-Van Tran (* 1979 in Ho Chi Minh City) lives and works in Paris. Her work draws connections between the political entanglements of nations and colonial legacies, traces of which remain inscribed and visible in many places: in language, bodies, and landscapes. At the KINDL, the artist presents her most recent works, some created specifically for this exhibition—including ceramics, painting, and drawing—which address the ecological and traumatic consequences of colonialism in Vietnam and Australia, and their resonances in Europe. Write As Beasts Scream at Night invokes the forces of resistance in nature, which quietly but persistently rebel against the wounds inflicted by human hands.

With her newly produced graphite drawings from the Trail Dust series, as well as ceramics created in Australia, Thu-Van Tran draws attention to landscapes permanently altered by bushfires, resource extraction, and a history of violence. Among her references is the Western Australian region around the “Golden Mile”, land claimed by various Aboriginal groups and marked by vast open-pit mines. Tran thus deepens her reflections on fire as a destructive as well as spiritual and transformative force, and on conflict-scarred land and the memory inscribed within it.

Write As Beasts Scream at Night is co-produced by the KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art and the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici. 

Supported by the Office of visual arts of the Institut français Germany and the French Ministry of Culture

Xavier Le Roy
Temporary Title, 2026—In the Middle, Somewhat Rehearsed
September 24–27, 2026
Maschinenhaus M0

With: Scarlet YuMei, Alice Heyward, Zeina Hanna, Lee Mun Wai, elena rose light, Cary Shiu, Jäckie Rydz, Alexandre Achour, Connor Scott, Yurika S. Yamamoto, Ying TingAn, Alex Viteri Arturo, Denise Lim, Xdzunúm Danae Trejo, annu mensen

Production: Le Kwatt / Coproduction: Festival D’automne Paris; Radialsystem Berlin; Taipei Performing Arts Center

Temporary Title, 2026 is a rehearsal for spaces that visitors enter and leave freely, staying for as long as they choose. The performers move through a series of metamorphoses, transforming both their own presence and the space around them, and creating different ways of being together. The choreography unfolds a striking situation, in which movement, sculpture, matter, and noises enhance that living presences are sharing the room.

With the support of the KINDL and the Île-de-France Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs (DRAC)

Press contact
Denhart von Harling, dh@segeband.de / T +49 179 4963497