Calendar

Participating artists:
Featuring works by Heidi Specker and Aenne Biermann Curator Franciska Zólyom Curatorial assistant Hanar Hupka Exhibition design BLESS Graphic design Müller & Wesse (Stephan Müller)

Period (opening hours):
Tue–Fri: 2 pm–7 pm, Sat–Sun and public holidays: 12 noon–6 pm

Venue:
gfzk - Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig
Karl–Tauchnitz–Str. 9-11
04107 Leipzig
gfzk.de

Heidi Specker’s exhibition is the latest instalment in her artistic exploration, spanning several years, of the life and work of the Jewish photographer Aenne Biermann (1898–1933). Drawing on public and private collections, the memories of her descendants and historical research into the Biermann family’s story of flight, Heidi Specker traces a history shaped by the political upheavals of the 20th century.

Aenne Biermann was a prominent figure in Gera’s urban society – in the 1920s, a cosmopolitan city and a cultural centre of modernism. In just a few years, the self-taught photographer became a leading exponent of avant-garde photography. She wore her hair short, in a ‘men’s cut’, and had her studio designed by one of the most sought-after architects of her time. Her photographs are characterised by the ‘New Vision’ – that is, the intense observation of the immediate surroundings and unusual perspectives on people and objects.
Heidi Specker explores the life and work of Aenne Biermann, establishing an artistic and personal connection with her. Loss plays a significant role in this. Aenne Biermann’s work came to an abrupt halt due to her early death from illness. Much of her photographic legacy was looted by the Nazis or is considered lost. In the course of her artistic research, Heidi Specker travelled to Gera, Trieste and Vienna and made contact with Aenne Biermann’s grandchildren. Through juxtapositions, she reimagines the photographer’s themes and compositions, appropriates them and translates them into the present day. Two video works recount key stages of her search for traces: in *Amnesia Gera*, Heidi Specker contrasts Gera’s once cosmopolitan city life with the marches of right-wing groups today. In *Vienna*, she explores the significance of material legacies for remembrance. Together with the design duo BLESS, she has developed a bespoke exhibition architecture and a limited edition inspired by the historical interior of Aenne Biermann’s ‘Damenzimmer’.

A German-language publication accompanying the exhibition features texts by Heidi Specker and Ronya Othmann, as well as contributions by Claudia Tittel, Daria Brasca, Anneliese Schallmeiner and Albena Zlatanova.

Heidi Specker has also designed the 2026 annual gift from the Friends of the HGB, which can be reserved immediately by emailing sroth@hgb-leipzig.de.

Venue:
Studio Michael Riedel
Niddastr. 84 (Hinterhaus)
60329 Frankfurt am Main

Hanns Bahra is to be awarded the MECkERT Art Prize for the first time this year. From 4 to 6 September 2026, Studio Michael Riedel will present his exhibition ‘Anhang im Süden’.

Hanns Bahra, a Leipzig-based artist and graduate of the Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig (HGB), combines illustration, painting and experimental object art in his work to create distinctive compositions. His works navigate the tension between abstract visual worlds and narrative graphics, with layering, textures and creative chance playing a central role. Moving beyond the two-dimensional plane of paper, Bahra expands his art through installations and theatrical objects.

The MECkERT Art Prize will be awarded for the first time in 2026. Endowed by the art-collecting couple Matthias and Kristine Meckert from Frankfurt am Main, it is awarded annually to artists who, following their studies in Prof. Michael Riedel’s class at the HGB Leipzig, have developed an outstanding artistic practice. The prize money of 5,000 euros is intended to strengthen the independence of the visual arts during the formative phase following graduation. The public award ceremony takes place as part of the season opening of Frankfurt’s galleries. The prize is presented in the form of a coin minted by Michael Riedel.

Participating artists:
Joachim Blank, Sonya Egorova, Marie Charlotte Elsner, Naomi Frank, Li Huhn, Laila Kamil, Niklas Kleemann, Samuel Kok, Clemens Körner, Franziska Kühn, Snow Paik, Sophie Charlotte von Rintelen, Pascal Schiffers, Marie Seelen, Einav Zeichner, Siyan Zhang, Yana Zschiedrich, Kwon Woo-jae, Kim Seo-yeon, Kim Yoon-young, Viktoriia Ermolaeva, Lee Seo-hyeon

Period (opening hours):
Fri, Sat, Sun / closed Sept 25 & 26

Venue:
Ilsansuji, 2nd floor, 58 Gamjeoncheon-ro, Sasang-gu, Busan

In September 2026, 《Will You Be My Penpal?》 opens on the 2nd floor of Ilsansuji — the beginning of an exchange project between Joachim Blank's class at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig (HGB) and the Department of Contemporary Art at Dong-A University. The artists' actual, in-person meeting is set for July next year. Before that, only the data of the works crosses over first. It is a preview exhibition in which data arrives ahead of everything else, crossing time and space. The title 《Will You Be My Penpal?》 is meant literally: a pen pal exchange.

What travels back and forth between the two distant places, Leipzig and Busan, is not text but a visual language carried by digital signals — different ways of approaching the medium.The participating HGB artists work with code, 3D scanning, AI-generated video, body data, and digital reconstruction. This data, arriving as files, commands, and renderings, only takes on material form once it is actually installed in the exhibition space in Busan. The five host artists from Dong-A University's Department of Contemporary Art respond instead with painting. The brushstrokes on canvas, the texture of paint, and their physical weight stand in sharp contrast to the immateriality of the transmitted data. Data that arrived from beyond the screen and canvases placed here in person meet on the 2nd floor of Ilsansuji. 《Will You Be My Penpal?》 is a place where data and materiality, the distant and the here, pass back and forth — and a letter that arrives first, before the real meeting next summer.

Participating artists:
Ronny Aviram, Buba Beboshvili, Lorin Brockhaus, Dania González Sanabria, Karen Kamiya, Martin Nielebock, Annelene Schreikrampf und Gesa Wagner

Period (opening hours):
Tuesday to Sunday and on public holidays: 11 am–5 pm

Venue:
Lindenau-Museum Altenburg im Prinzenpalais des Residenzschlosses Altenburg
Schloss 16
04600 Altenburg

What inspires young artists? What themes do they explore in their artistic practice? The exhibition accompanying the Lindenau Prize, which will be awarded for the third time by the Lindenau Museum in Altenburg in autumn 2026, provides answers to these questions.

For the prize, the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle, the Academy of Graphic Arts and Book Design Leipzig and the Bauhaus University Weimar each nominate two students, who will present their work in the Prinzenpalais at the Altenburg Residential Palace. This year’s promising international artists are: Ronny Aviram, Buba Beboshvili, Lorin Brockhaus, Dania González Sanabria, Karen Kamiya, Martin Nielebock, Annelene Schreikrampf and Gesa Wagner. The artists’ themes and techniques are diverse, so visitors can look forward to fascinating insights into contemporary art. Through the mediums of painting, collage, sculpture, photography, performance, video and installation, these young artists explore themes such as identity, memory, artificial intelligence, traces and social norms.

From among the eight entries, a jury comprising experts and sponsors will select the winner of the Lindenau Prize, which is endowed with 5,000 euros.
A catalogue will be published to accompany the exhibition.

Accompanying programme...

Participating artists:
Robin Becker, Lotta Beckers, Véra Marie Deubner, Luca Diebold, To Fabek, Johanna Gruber, Max Grund, Rahel Scharabi, Ossama Shalgheen (Aseem), Asya Volodina
The performances were created as part of Jule Flierl’s Score Laboratory, as well as within the framework of Anna Zett’s study project ‘Public in Person’.

Venue:
Gewandhaus zu Leipzig
Augustusplatz 8
04109 Leipzig
www.gewandhausorchester.de

For the Democracy Weekend at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig from 4 to 6 September 2026, students from Jule Flierl and Anna Zett’s performative arts class, together with the Gewandhaus Choir conducted by Gregor Meyer, have developed the project ‘Lauschzustand – Manifestations and Spaces of Connection’. On the Sunday of the election in Saxony-Anhalt, the students will present performative pieces along a route, accompanied by the Gewandhaus Choir. The trail leads through the Gewandhaus to locations with a special atmosphere and culminates in a choral gathering in the Mendelssohn Hall, creating a shared musical experience of connection.

For the project, the teaching staff and students have been working artistically on the theme of political participation and public presence. The starting point was a reflection on neutrality as a fiction and democracy as an open group process that challenges us emotionally. The ‘score’ – a kind of musical score or notation for performances – opened up a space of possibilities here for formulating temporary, self-defined rules in the sense of instructions for play, which give rise not only to musical performances but also to social encounters.

At the heart of the semester project, which resulted in both solo and group works, lies the choir as a living space for relationships: a polyphonic structure that at times asserts a collective voice, and at other times invites communication. In various experimental and conceptual ways, the participating artists explore the voice as a mediator between the inner and the outer, the body and language, the individual and society. Democracy emerges here as an open group experience – underpinned by listening, vulnerability and the challenge of being present together.

Programme:

Augustusplatz

• ‘Tea Time’, dialogue performance, Soschka
• ‘Prologue: Standard Rifles (G95A1, MG4, G28, G22 to G25, MG50-1, MZF1, GLM, AG36, MG6, MP7A1, MP5K, Mauser Model 98 and many more)’, performance, Rahel Scharabi
• “es kippt es”, performance by Max Grund with the Gewandhaus Choir
• “SCHREI (chor)”, choral composition, Robin Becker with the Gewandhaus Choir

Main Hall

• “Stabil”, 3 compositions for solo voices, choir and organ, Véra Marie Deubner, with the Gewandhaus Choir
• “I am the sea (أنا البحر)”, vocal performance, Ossama Shalgheen (Aseem)
• “Organum2026”, composition for choir and organ, Luca Diebold with the Gewandhaus Choir

Mendelssohn Hall

• “Dämmerungen”, a participatory composition for solo, duo and choir, by Lotta Beckers, To Fabek and Johanna
  Gruber with the Gewandhaus Choir

This year marks the fifth edition of the Democracy Weekend at the Gewandhaus, which this time takes place under the theme ‘Reading the Signs’. It is dedicated to discourse and social reflection, inviting the audience to collectively examine, contextualise and think through current developments. It is organised in cooperation with the Saxon State Agency for Political Education and is supported by the Commerzbank Foundation, the Krupp Foundation, the Zukunft Gewandhaus zu Leipzig Foundation, the ZEIT STIFTUNG BUCERIUS and the ‘Zukunftswege Ost’ initiative.

More information on the Democracy Weekend at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig...

Venue:
Richard-Wagner-Hain
Leipzig

Live performance: 10 & 12 September 2026 Audio walk premiere: early April 2027

In the audio walk Chorus versus Monument, the audience is guided through the Richard Wagner Grove in Leipzig by a choir. It was there in 1934 that Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler laid the foundation stone for a Richard Wagner monument that was never completed.

Through this audio walk, the artist Frederike Moormann explores, on the one hand, the historical layers of the grove – from the Weimar Republic through National Socialism and the GDR to the present day.

On the other hand, she engages with the musical work of Richard Wagner, whose own anti-Semitic writings, nationalist public appearances and musical themes resonated strongly with the ideologies of the Nazi regime.

Through an audio walk and a choral concert that deconstructs and samples Wagner’s musical motifs, the grove’s historical layers become accessible and Wagner’s nationalist themes audible in the music. Chor kontra Monument asks what it means to visit a place with this history, named after a controversial composer, today, and poses the question: What was built here, and for whom?

To mark the partial renovation of the eastern section of the Richard Wagner Grove, *Chor kontra Monument* will have its world premiere on 10 and 12 September 2026 as a live performance with wireless headphones. From April 2027, upon completion of the renovation and to mark the opening exhibition of the project series at the Richard Wagner Grove, and featuring further contributions by Maya Schweizer (Berlin) and the Kubik collective (Dresden/Leipzig/ Weimar), the audio walk is to be permanently accessible via a QR code on users’ own smartphones.

Chor kontra Monument is being created in collaboration with Nora Benamara, Maximilian Bischofberger, Felix Deufel, Chara Giannou, Helgard Haug, Hauptmeier | Recker, Julia Kurz, Lefteris Krysalis, Marie-Louise Monrad-Møller and Walburga Walde

About the artist: Frederike Moormann is a radio and sound artist. She lives and works in Leipzig and Weimar. Her site-specific practice combines archival research, vocal experiments and radio transmissions. The collaborative audio walk ‘Space has become a crowded place’ (Theater RAMPE, Project Room Namibia, Funkstation Nauen/Brandenburg Museum, Deutschlandfunk Kultur) explores colonial history, trauma and communication infrastructures. Her audio walk “Und gegenüber spielt die Blaskapelle” was awarded the Audiowalk Award in 2024. Since 2020, she has been an artistic collaborator at the Experimental Radio department of the Bauhaus University Weimar.

‘Chor kontra Monument’ marks the start of the ‘Kunst zum Richard-Wagner-Hain’ series, which is being realised in 2027 by the ‘Stadtkuratorin Leipzig’ programme – the City of Leipzig’s programme for art in public spaces – and the Office for Urban Greenery and Waterways, in cooperation with Freiraumkonzepte landscape architects. The project is funded by Musikfonds e.V. and the City of Leipzig’s Department of Culture, and is supported by Hörspielsommer Leipzig.

Venue:
Tempelhof Airport

Hangar 5 & 6 Tempelhofer Damm 45

12101 Berlin

Academy POSITIONS aims to connect artists with key contacts among gallery owners, curators and collectors, in order to ease their transition to working as independent artists and help them gain their first experiences in the art market. The Class of 2026 includes HGB artists Marie Charlotte Elsner and Sophie Constanze Polheim.

Visitors have the unique opportunity to gain a comprehensive insight into a new generation of artists and to support them at an early stage in their careers.

Participating artists:
Max Bresele, Frieda Fritzu Henrici, Yunus Hutterer, Elif Muhit, Ayla Saffeels, Caro Schiml, klara stangl

Period (opening hours):
Sunday, 2 pm – 6 pm

Venue:
Weiden Art Society
Ledererstraße 7
92637 Weiden in der Oberpfalz
www.kunstvereinweiden.de

The group exhibition “when we keep each other” explores the question of how we can act in solidarity and as a community in times of social, environmental and political crises. Inspired by the “Solarpunk” exhibition in 2025, the event invites visitors to create spaces of connection – beyond powerlessness and resignation. HGB student Klara Stangl is also featured in the exhibition with a piece. She is studying in Anna Ehrenstein’s photography class specialising in contemporary art.

Special dates:

• 11 September, 8 pm: Opening
• 13 September, 2.00 pm: Hutza Café
• 18 September, 8.00 pm: Kollapscafé
• 19 September, 7.30 pm: Coordination in the absence of state institutions
• 20 September, 4.00 pm Emergency rucksack
• 25 September, 6.00 pm KoOp Art Night
• 27 September, 6.00 pm Digital Bug Out Bag
• 4 October, 5.00 pm Reading + Küfa
• 6 October, 6.00 pm Hutza Café
• 7 October, 6 pm Mutual Aid
• 10 October, 7.00 pm: How to make agriculture and food distribution resilient for the future
  
  
  

Venue:
Richard-Wagner-Hain
Leipzig

Live performance: 10 & 12 September 2026 Audio walk premiere: early April 2027

In the audio walk Chorus versus Monument, the audience is guided through the Richard Wagner Grove in Leipzig by a choir. It was there in 1934 that Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler laid the foundation stone for a Richard Wagner monument that was never completed.

Through this audio walk, the artist Frederike Moormann explores, on the one hand, the historical layers of the grove – from the Weimar Republic through National Socialism and the GDR to the present day.

On the other hand, she engages with the musical work of Richard Wagner, whose own anti-Semitic writings, nationalist public appearances and musical themes resonated strongly with the ideologies of the Nazi regime.

Through an audio walk and a choral concert that deconstructs and samples Wagner’s musical motifs, the grove’s historical layers become accessible and Wagner’s nationalist themes audible in the music. Chor kontra Monument asks what it means to visit a place with this history, named after a controversial composer, today, and poses the question: What was built here, and for whom?

To mark the partial renovation of the eastern section of the Richard Wagner Grove, *Chor kontra Monument* will have its world premiere on 10 and 12 September 2026 as a live performance with wireless headphones. From April 2027, upon completion of the renovation and to mark the opening exhibition of the project series at the Richard Wagner Grove, and featuring further contributions by Maya Schweizer (Berlin) and the Kubik collective (Dresden/Leipzig/ Weimar), the audio walk is to be permanently accessible via a QR code on users’ own smartphones.

Chor kontra Monument is being created in collaboration with Nora Benamara, Maximilian Bischofberger, Felix Deufel, Chara Giannou, Helgard Haug, Hauptmeier | Recker, Julia Kurz, Lefteris Krysalis, Marie-Louise Monrad-Møller and Walburga Walde

About the artist: Frederike Moormann is a radio and sound artist. She lives and works in Leipzig and Weimar. Her site-specific practice combines archival research, vocal experiments and radio transmissions. The collaborative audio walk ‘Space has become a crowded place’ (Theater RAMPE, Project Room Namibia, Funkstation Nauen/Brandenburg Museum, Deutschlandfunk Kultur) explores colonial history, trauma and communication infrastructures. Her audio walk “Und gegenüber spielt die Blaskapelle” was awarded the Audiowalk Award in 2024. Since 2020, she has been an artistic collaborator at the Experimental Radio department of the Bauhaus University Weimar.

‘Chor kontra Monument’ marks the start of the ‘Kunst zum Richard-Wagner-Hain’ series, which is being realised in 2027 by the ‘Stadtkuratorin Leipzig’ programme – the City of Leipzig’s programme for art in public spaces – and the Office for Urban Greenery and Waterways, in cooperation with Freiraumkonzepte landscape architects. The project is funded by Musikfonds e.V. and the City of Leipzig’s Department of Culture, and is supported by Hörspielsommer Leipzig.

Participating artists:
Huniti Goldox, Charlotte Eifler, Felix Pacholleck, Raisan Hameed, Vanessa Amoah Opoku and others

Period (opening hours):
11 am – 10 pm

Venue:
silent green Kulturquartier Berlin
Gerichtstraße 35
13347 Berlin
www.silent-green.net/

Partner:
Organised by eCommemoration (Körber Foundation) in collaboration with transmediale, CTM and VideoClub.

Curated exhibitions, performative works and discussions at this festival explore how memory is addressed in the age of algorithms, artificial intelligence and digital media – beyond institutional narratives and straddling the boundaries between documentation, fiction and speculative practice.
Also taking part are graduates and students from the HGB Leipzig: The duo Huniti Goldox, Charlotte Eifler, Felix Pacholleck, Raisan Hameed and Vanessa Amoah Opoku will present transgressive artistic works on both days of the festival that push boundaries and challenge official historical narratives.

Transgressive Memory is a new festival that brings together artistic and critical research to understand memory as a living process – shaped by technologies, power relations and often unheard voices. The programme includes exhibitions, performances, lectures and discussions that outline alternative visions for the present and the future.

Further information & full programme

Organised by eCommemoration (Körber Foundation) in cooperation with transmediale, CTM and VideoClub.

Participating artists:
Paula Doepfner, Lotte Meret Effinger, Andrea Freiberg, Sabine Groß, Cornelia Herfurtner, Dina Khouri, Benjamin Kunath, Kaarina-Sirkku Kurz, Marei Loellmann, Uta Neumann, Lisa Peters, Sophie Constanze Polheim, Wagehe Raufi, Katharina Reinsbach, Maxi Thom, Emma Zimmermann

Period (opening hours):
Tuesday – Sunday, 11 am – 6 pm

Venue:
Haus am Kleistpark
Grunewaldstraße 6-7
10823 Berlin

The Tempelhof-Schöneberg Municipal Galleries organise the annual Haus am Kleistpark Art Prize. Under the overarching theme “FRACTURE”, the works of the nominated artists will be on display from September to December in a group exhibition at the Haus am Kleistpark in Berlin. Sophie Constanze Polheim, a postgraduate at the HGB Leipzig, is represented in the exhibition with her series of works entitled “Nightingale’s Tale”.

Venue:
WERKSCHAU Halle 12
Baumwollspinnerei
04179 Leipzig

At the end of the summer term, the HGB is presenting the final projects of the postgraduate students from all disciplines from the study year of 2025/26. These projects are the result of the two-year postgraduate programme at the HGB, which deepens and broadens students’ artistic-practical and artistic-academic skills.

The following students sat their examinations this year:
Adam Alezrah, Ronja Brainstorm, Eva Gräbeldinger, Anastasiia Grigoriadi, Rawan Hassan, Sophie Constanze Polheim, Marinus Reuter, Catherine Sanke, David Schröder, Svetlana Shilankova, Karolina Sobel, Liu Tianxu, Anali Vakili Ardebili, Hannah Witte.

This year marks the tenth time that a graduate has been honoured with the G2 Kunsthalle Master’s Student Prize. The award is worth €10,000 and includes a free studio space for 12 months.

Venue:
HGB gallery
Wächterstraße 11
04107 Leipzig
www.hgb-leipzig.de/galerie
instagram.com/hgbgallery

In 2016, the HGB Leipzig established the Academy for Transcultural Exchange (AtA), Germany’s first regular degree programme for people with a refugee background in the fields of fine art and graphic design.

From the outset, the Academy for Transcultural Exchange saw itself as more than just a study programme. With its establishment, the HGB recognised migration as a fundamental part of our society and set out the aim of further developing the art college itself as a transcultural space. Facilitating access has always meant transforming the institution itself: broadening artistic and academic perspectives, challenging a white Western canon, and creating the conditions for a course of study that critically engages with discrimination.

With a programme of exhibitions and events, the HGB is celebrating the AtA’s tenth anniversary and reflecting on its history and present.
The social and political context has changed fundamentally since 2016. Funding programmes that made the establishment of the Academy possible have largely come to an end or are under threat of cuts. Programmes for refugee students have been discontinued at many higher education institutions. At the same time, terms such as ‘internationalisation’ and ‘diversity’ are gaining prominence in higher education policy, whilst flight, forced migration and their historical and contemporary causes are often overlooked.

Based on an understanding of transculturality as a process of encounter and mutual transformation, the programme also looks to the future. Former and current members of the AtA will come together with guests from the worlds of art, academia and higher education in lectures, discussions, workshops and an exhibition. The focus is on the future of the AtA at the HGB and the question of which artistic and institutional practices facilitate transcultural exchange.

15–22 October 2026 Exhibition
15–17 October 2026 Workshops / Talks / Events

22 October 2026 Closing event

Participating artists:
Franziska Dathe, Klara Fischer, Aya Ganor, Toni Gerhardt, Linda Göhrs, Bente Heyer, Selma Kan, Jette Kleindienst, Mathilda Köhler, Fox Kynast, Gisou Rosenthal, Klara Schöll, Sonia Shono, Matthias Sterff, Luise Tschakert

Venue:
K2 im Allgemeinen Konsumverein Braunschweig
Hinter Liebfrauen 2
38100 Braunschweig

A group of students is exploring the theme of the ‘amygdala complex’:
Picturesque eeriness, animated ghosts, childlike innocence,
and strange figures all come together in K2.

The challenge of exhibiting in a rather small space alongside
fellow students presents opportunities for the group and the
young artists, who are finding their way through various media and subjects.
This exciting process is being guided by Marthe Lallemand,
artistic collaborator in Leipzig, and forms part of the
Konsumverein’s professional development programme.

Venue:
Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig
Wächterstraße 11
04107 Leipzig

Following the successful Faculty Days in 2016 and 2017, the Book Design/Graphic Design department’s alumni event is returning to the HGB. Over two days, students, alumni and teaching staff will come together to discuss the future of visual communication, gain insights into different career paths and forge both old and new connections.

On Friday, the programme will open with a panel discussion on the topic ‘AI and the Future of Graphic Design’. Following this, and on Saturday, 32 alumni will give short talks presenting their work and experiences since graduating. Friday evening will conclude with a social gathering in the HGB’s atrium. Further information will follow shortly.

Venue:
Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig
Wächterstraße 11
04107 Leipzig


More information will follow.