Updates

  • 11.07.2025 - 05.10.2025
    Knochen, Pech, Natternkopf (Being a Photograph)

    Opening: July 10, 7 pm

    Scenography: Leia Walz
    Graphic design: James Langdon
    Video work: Aleksander Komarov

    What is a photograph, and what stories are told by the elements within a photographic image? These are the questions explored by Susanne Kriemann. Her field research leads her to former uranium mining areas in the Ore Mountains and the Massif Central in the south of France, or to a steel mill in Germany’s Siegerland region. Visitors to the exhibition are invited to follow the artist’s investigations and to consider plants, minerals and metals as active agents in the production of images. It begins with footage of Monte Schlacko in Siegen, a slag heap formed as a byproduct of steel production. Its soil, which contains heavy metals, has become a habitat for rare plant species. These plants not only witness industrial production – at the same time they embody it, feeding on its waste products. The photographs and textile artworks created in Saxony, Thuringia and the Limousin region explore the afterlife of radioactive radiation. Using X-ray images and autoradiographs, Susanne Kriemann reveals the traces of uranium in plants growing in former mining areas. She traces connections between materials and forms of energy and existence that reach beyond human life. Pitchblende, the ore from which uranium is extracted, plays a special role: its radiation allows photographic images to be produced without the need for light. The darkness in the middle room of the exhibition space is reminiscent of the subterranean world of mining. Here, mining tools appear as fleeting projections.

    The exhibition is a cooperation with Camera Austria and was shown in Graz from 8 March to 18 May 2025 under the title Susanne Kriemann: Ray, Rock, Rowan (Being a Photograph, curated by Margit Neuhold. It was then expanded for the presentation in Leipzig. The reader is available at the GfZK.

    A reader accompanying the exhibition was published by Edition Camera Austria. Designed by James Langdon, it brings texts by Siobhan Angus, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Zippora Elders, Daisy Hildyard, Bhanu Kapil, Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou, Lisa Rosendahl, and an introduction by Margit Neuhold and Christina Töpfer.

  • 04.07.2025
    Being A Photograph

    Book launch
    July 4th, 2025, 6.30 pm
    with James Langdon, Christina Töpfer, Lisa Rosendahl.

    Camera Austria Berlin in Kunstquartier Bethanien
    First floor / Room 137
    Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin

    The event will take place in English.

    Accompanying the exhibition Ray, Rock, Rowan (Being a Photograph) at Camera Austria, Graz from 8.3. – 18.5.2025.

    With a foreword by Margit Neuhold & Christina Töpfer and texts by Siobhan Angus, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Zippora Elders, Daisy Hildyard, Bhanu Kapil, Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou, and Lisa Rosendahl (eng.).

    Edition Camera Austria, Graz 2025.
    108 pages, 13 × 20 cm, numerous b/w and color illustrations.
    ISBN 978-3-902911-85-8

  • 21.03.2025 - 13.07.2025
    Shadowily in different tongues

    Opening, 20.2.205
    ifa Gallery Stuttgart

    This exhibition brings together artists and local communities that resist the social and political processes that are driving planet Earth and its human and non-human inhabitants to the verge of exhaustion. These voices from various regions stand up against the exploitation of nature and people – like destructive mining activity, the poisoning and waste of water: acts that change and destroy habitats. They defend a plurality of languages and forms of life.
    The participating artists and communities develop counter-worlds that draw on local memories. They create spaces for action and they make perceivable, how our bodies are entangled with every-body that surrounds us: through movement, language, the telling of stories, and passing on knowledge or eating communally.

    By observing, recording, creating new configurations and speculating, the artists create pictorial worlds, knowledge, and form of witness. They renew memories and shape futures that are reinforced through community. The practices that unite “shadowily in different tongues” appeal to solidarity and justice as opportunities to connect with each other and to celebrate different forms of cohabitation.

    Curated by Bettina Korintenberg, Mauricio Marcín, and Gabriel Rossell Santillán in the scope of the one-year programme Agua Quemada (Burnt Water) at ifa Gallery Stuttgart.

    With contributions by Lise Autogena & Joshua Portway, Minia Biabiany, Calpulli Tecalco (Angélica Palma), Colectiva Milpa urbana, Keiko Kimoto & Gabriel Rossel Santillán, Susanne Kriemann, Crisanto Manzano, Karen Michelsen, Tina Modotti, Katya Mora, Edith Morales, Fernando Palma, Panósmico, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, Tequiocalco, Bruno Varela

  • 01.03.2025
    MARYAM JAFRI I SUSANNE KRIEMANN I SU YU HSIN – DE-CODING THE ECOLOGICAL CRISIS

    OPENING DAYS OF EMOP
    C/O AKADEMIE DER KÜNSTE
    HANSEATENWEG 10
    10557 BERLIN – TIERGARTEN

    2 pm – 3.30 pm

    Moderated by: Franziska Kunze, Head of the Photography and Time-based Media Collection at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

    In De-Coding the Ecological Crisis, three artists have their say, who in their work deal with the ecological crises of the present, sometimes over long periods of time. In their research-based processes, they are not interested in recording images of catastrophes and documenting the devastation. Rather, they explore the contexts and processes in which these environmental crises occur and show their effects on people, infrastructures and ecosystems. What strategies do the artists develop to translate the often not immediately visible mechanisms into a visual language? The panel will provide an insight into a subject area that is increasingly developing into a genre of its own in art.

    https://emop-berlin.eu

    Panel in English

  • 07.03.2025 - 18.05.2025
    Ray, Rock, Rowan (Being a Photograph)

    Susanne Kriemann, in her radically expanded conception of photography, researches geological periods and challenges the politics of visibility: What could it mean to understand the world as a giant recording system, as a photograph?

    Camera Austria’s exhibition space in the Eisernes Haus (Iron House) forms the backdrop for the project Hey Monte Schlacko, dear Slagorg (since 2024). In the contaminated, exploited landscape of a vacant site for mining ore, there are mosses and lichens interacting with other plants, regenerating the soils alongside rocks; echoing in the scenography is the exhaustion, resistance, and trauma of these anthropocentric geographies. This most recent work dialogues with Susanne Kriemann’s long-term research approach, which focuses on the vegetation of landscapes that uranium mining has left behind: the plants metabolizing these toxic soils bring color to the silk panels of Canopy canopy (since 2018); Wild Carrot, False Chamomile, Ox Tongue (Wilde Möhre, Falsche Kamille, Bitterkraut, since 2016) romp through heliogravures; the radioactive pitchblende (Pechblende, since 2015) exposes autoradiographs and photograms; and X-ray images show skeletons of plants like lupine, fern, and gorse bush (Lupin, fougère, genêt, since 2024). The “library for radioactive afterlife” (since 2015) offers publications with different narratives from the Atomic Age, and it expands Camera Austria’s library while also underscoring Susanne Kriemann’s book-making practice.

    The exhibition is accompanied by an English-language reader published by Edition Camera Austria, which brings together authors who offer a frame of reference for Susanne Kriemann’s work: Siobhan Angus, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Zippora Elders, Daisy Hildyard, Bhanu Kapil, Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou, Lisa Rosendahl. Book design: James Langdon.

    www.camera-austria.at

Archived updates

  • 13.10.2023 - 12.02.2024
    Greenery – plants in contemporary photography

    curated by Katja Reich

    Berlinische Galerie Berlin
    berlinischegalerie.de

    Lofty firs, dense mangroves, bizarre pistils – the shapes created by the plant world are prodigious. Embedded within their own complex, highly sensitive ecosystems, plants intertwine with human culture in many different ways. Contemplating them can soothe the nerves, give food for thought and trigger powerful emotions such as fear or anxiety.

    The exhibition “Greenery: Plants in contemporary photography” responds to this multi-faceted theme. These contemporary works mostly from our Photography Collection address the often contradictory relationship between humans and plants through the medium of photography. The six photographers and artists do not focus here on vegetation in its wild and untamed state, but on how it has been overlaid by human activity: carefully stacked deadwood in Germany’s Black Forest, mangrove swamps contaminated by plastic in Indonesia, botanical cultures in the tropics. These depictions dig down to the cultural inventions underlying apparently archetypal notions. They open up avenues to revisit the shifting relationships between humans and plants.

    Artists: Falk Haberkorn, Ingar Krauss, Susanne Kriemann, Mimi Cherono Ng‘ok, Stefanie Seufert, Auriga/Folkwang-Archiv featured by Andrzej Steinbach.

  • 03.05.2023 - 23.02.2024
    The Lives of Documents—Photography as Project

    curated by Bas Princen and Stefano Graziani

    CCA Montreal
    cca.qc.ca

    The Lives of Documents—Photography as Project is the first of a trilogy of research and exhibition projects produced by the CCA on the medium of photography—between work of art, research tool, and document—as a means to investigate the built environment. Curated by Bas Princen and Stefano Graziani, The Lives of Documents—Photography as Project is structured as an exhibition, an oral history conducted in cinematographic form, a series of commissioned artists’ books, and a web issue. The project aims to dissect the practice of artists and photographers whose work has crucially contributed to defining thresholds of transformation of the discipline within the last fifty years in relation to specific topics—from the notion of landscape to the complexity of the archive as a project format, among others.

    Lara Almarcegui; Lewis Baltz; Gabriele Basilico, Stefano Boeri; Bernd and Hilla Becher; Lynne Cohen; Luigi Ghirri; Dan Graham; Jan Groover; Guido Guidi; Naoya Hatakeyama; Takashi Homma; Roni Horn; Douglas Huebler; Annette Kelm; Gert Jan Kocken; Aglaia Konrad; Susanne Kriemann; Sol LeWitt; Armin Linke; Ari Marcopoulos; Gordon Matta-Clark; Richard Misrach; Marianne Mueller; Bruce Nauman; Michael Schmidt; Thomas Struth; Tokuko Ushioda; Jeff Wall; Marianne Wex.

  • 03.06.2023 - 31.07.2023
    Cruel Radiance

    curated by Karo Marko and Harry Palviranta

    Backlight Festival

    backlight.fi

    What kind of evidentiary power can we associate with images in a world where man-made crises and conflicts have long since exceeded human proportions? How does matter, our material and elementary surroundings, record evidence of violence? What kind of roles do such non-human visual actors have in bearing witness to our pernicious actions?

    Cruel Radiance, the 2023 edition of the Backlight festival, examines the evidential aspects of matter through photography and the moving image. From the omnipresence of particle pollution to the lasting legacies of nuclear weapons, from sub-zero temperatures to the residues of the mining industry, the exhibition sheds light on a whole variety of material elements as visual actors with singular testimonial capacities. In so doing, the stage is set for diverse visual dimensions and temporalities of violence ranging from slow cumulative processes to more abrupt conflicts. True to its title, Cruel Radiance invites the viewer to engage with a material repository of our ways of being together.

     

    Artists: Fiona Amundsen and Kanariya Eishi, Solmaz Daryani, Veli Granö, HNV Collective: Felicia Honkasalo, Akuliina Niemi, Sinna Virtanen, Susanne Kriemann, Noelle Mason, Ali Akbar Mehta, Anastasia Mityukova, Susan Schuppli, Anaïs Tondeur, Toshio Fukada, Eiichi Matsumoto.

  • 09.03.2023 - 29.05.2023
    MINING PHOTOGRAPHY. THE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT OF IMAGE PRODUCTION

    curated by Esther Ruelfs and Boaz Levin

    Kunst Haus Wien

    kunsthauswien.com

    At the exhibition, historical photographs, contemporary artistic positions and interviews with experts tell the story of art photography from the perspective of its industrial production. Where, for example, did the copper come from that was used for Hermann Biow’s famous daguerreotype of Alexander von Humboldt? Showcasing 170 works, the exhibition impressively illustrates how, ever since its invention, the medium of photography has contributed to man-made changes in nature – and continues to do so to this day. From the very outset, the production of photographs has depended on the extraction and exploitation of natural raw materials. In the 19th century, salt, copper and silver were used to create the first images on copper plates and for salt prints. Following the advent of silver gelatine prints, the photography industry became the most important consumer of silver in the late 20th century, accounting for more than half of global consumption. Today, in the age of smartphones and digital photography, image production relies on rare earths and metals such as coltan, cobalt and europium. The storage of images and their dissemination also produce large quantities of CO2.

    Ignacio Acosta, Eduard Christian Arning, Lisa Barnard, Hermann Biow, F&D Cartier, Klasse Digitale Grafik – HFBK Hamburg (Mari Lebanidze, Miao ‘Cleo’ Yuekai, Leon Schweer und Marco Wesche), Oscar und Theodor Hofmeister, Susanne Kriemann, Honoré d’Albert de Luynes und Louis Vignes, Jürgen Friedrich Mahrt, Mary Mattingly, Charles Nègre, Optics Division of the Metabolic Studio (Lauren Bon, Tristan Duke und Richard Nielsen), Madame d’Ora, Lisa Rave, Hermann Reichling, Alison Rossiter, Daphné Nan Le Sergent, Robert Smithson, Anaïs Tondeur, James Welling, Noa Yafe, Tobias Zielony

  • 15.07.2022 - 31.10.2022
    MINING PHOTOGRAPHY. THE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT OF IMAGE PRODUCTION

    curated by Esther Ruelfs and Boaz Levin

    Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

    https://www.mkg-hamburg.de

    “Mining Photography: The Ecological Footprint of Image Production” is dedicated to the material history of key resources used for image production, adressing the social and political context of their extraction and waste and its relation to climate change. Using historical photo¬graphs and contemporary artistic positions as well as interviews with restorers, geologists, and climate researchers, the exhibition tells the story of photography as one of industrial production, showing the extent to which the medium has been deeply intertwined with human change of the environment.

    With Ignacio Acosta, Lisa Barnard, F& D Cartier, Optics Division of the Metabolic Studio (Lauren Bon, Tristan Duke, Richard Nielsen), Klasse Digitale Grafik HFBK (Mari Lebanidze, Cleo Miao, Leon Schwer und Marco Wesche), Susanne Kriemann, Mary Mattingly, Daphné Nan Le Sergent, Lisa Rave, Alison Rossiter, Robert Smithson, Simon Starling, Anaïs Tondeur, James Welling, Noa Yafe, Tobias Zielony

    In cooperation with Kunsthaus Wien, Gewerbemuseum Winterthur and the HFBK Hamburg.

     

  • 10.06.2022 - 14.08.2022
    Takeover

    curated by the children of 48. Grundschule, Pankow , Carl-Humann-Grundschule, Prenzlauer Berg , Heinrich-von-Stephan-Gemeinschaftsschule, Moabit

    guided by Julia Moritz and Jennifer Streter

    Gropius Bau Berlin

    https://www.berlinerfestspiele.de

    Takeover invites children to take on the role of curators. Featuring works by international artists, the exhibition curated and realised by Berlin primary school students is now on view on the ground floor of the Gropius Bau.

    With Vanessa Farfán, Jan Peter Hammer, Khansa Humeidan, Susanne Kriemann, Michelle-Marie Letelier, Lisa Rave, Egill Sæbjörnsson. The first iteration took place in 2021 with Roberta Busechian and Tue Greenfort, .

     

  • 10.09.2021 - 24.04.2022
    Mind Bombs. Visual Cultures of Political Violence

    Curated by Dr. Sebastian Baden

    Kunsthalle Mannheim

    https://www.kuma.art

    RAF, NSU and IS are names of terrorist groups whose extremist propaganda and political violence challenge the visual arts to react decisively. The exhibition “MINDBOMBS” at the Kunsthalle Mannheim opens up a highly topical artistic perspective on the history and political iconography of modern terrorism. For the first time, the effects of social revolutionary, right-wing extremist and jihadist terrorism on visual culture will be examined together in three sections. 20 years after September 11, 2001 and 10 years after the discovery of the NSU in Germany, the exhibition is dedicated to the fighting term of terrorism and its changes in history from the French Revolution to the present.

    Artists:  Hiba Al Ansari, Khalid Albaih, Morehshin Allahyari, Francis Alÿs, Kader Attia, Walter Dahn & Jiří Dokoupi, Jacques-Louis David, Christoph Draeger, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Forensic Architecture, Chloé Galibert-Lâiné & Kevin B. Lee, Gregory Green, Johan Grimonprez, Richard Hamilton, Omar Imam, Initiative 19. Februar Hanau, Christof Kohlhöfer, Susanne Kriemann, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Almut Linde, Georg Lutz, Édouard Manet, Paula Markert, Olaf Metzel, Henrike Naumann, Wolf Pehlke, Ariel Reichman, Gerhard Richter, Thomas Ruff, Ivana Spinelli, Klaus Staeck, J.M. Voltz

    Intervention „Brick by Brick“: Francesca Audretsch, Vanessa Bosch, Mustafa Emin Büyükcoşkun, Charlotte Eifler & Clarissa Thieme, Anna Knöller, Isabelle Konrad, Judith Milz, Nis Petersen, Johanna Schäfer, Natalia Schmidt, Karolina Sobel, Janis Zeckai.

  • 13.09.2020 - 31.12.2022
    In the SS-Auxiliary – The Female Guards of the Ravensbrück Women’s Concentration Camp

    co-conceived by Dominique Hurth

    www.ravensbrueck-sbg.de

    Permanent artistic intervention at the Mahn‑ und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück

    The exhibition focuses on the following themes: the women’s background; the power and violence relationships that prevailed at the camp; the career opportunities of female guards; and the site of Ravensbrück as a principal training and recruitment center for female guards. In addition, it addresses the victims’ attempts of seeking justice as well as the “silence that speaks volumes” on the part of their perpetrators. Last but not least, the fascinating appeal of the figure of the ‘SS female guard’ in popular culture is also put up for discussion.

    Under the title “Pictures, Voices, and Clichés”, five artists have developed interventions in cooperation with the exhibition project. They approach the topic of the SS female guard from a perspective relevant to the present day. The traces of violence in architectural relics and landscapes, the dichotomy of home and crime scene, the role of music within the context of forced labour, the ‘brutal cosiness’ of the interiors of the guards’ accommodation, the educational methods within the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft (‘people’s community’) – these are all focal points of the artistic strategies.

    The artistic contributions of Marianna Christofides, Arnold Dreyblatt, Moritz Fehr, Dominique Hurth and Susanne Kriemann are embedded within the historical exhibition.

     

     

  • 01.12.2021 - 18.03.2022
    BEUYS OPEN SOURCE

    Belmacz

    45 Davies Street, London

    Not an exhibition in homage, Beuys Open Source treats the legacy of Joseph Beuys as something of a publicly accessible data set. Working with this twenty-first century metaphor involves seeing the Artist not as a political figure but as someone with far more social sway in our contemporary age: the startup CEO. That is, the founder of something innovative; the boss with skittish determination; the convener of bodies, who together can defy normalcy to materialise fantasy. Here, we are reminded that epistemologically both mysticism and symbolism – two words steeped in Beuysian associations – have common roots in that which is collectively agreed, believed, and followed.

    Artists: Carla Åhlander, Mikael D. Brkic, Dan Coopey, Rafael Pérez Evans, Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, Johanna M. Guggenberger, Steph Huang, Daniel Huss, Susanne Kriemann, Elisabeth Molin, Joel Tomlin and Abbas Zahedi.

    http://belmacz.com