Ex/Changing: Transculturality and institutional Work (15.-22.10.2026)
In 2016, the HGB Leipzig established the Academy for Transcultural Exchange, the nation’s first regular degree program for people with a refugee background in the fields of fine arts and graphic design.
From the very beginning, the Academy for Transcultural Exchange saw itself as more than just an academic program. From its founding, the HGB recognized migration as a fundamental part of our society and set out to develop the art academy itself into a transcultural space. In this context, facilitating access has always also meant transforming the institution: broadening artistic and scholarly perspectives, challenging a white Western canon, and creating the conditions for a curriculum critical of discrimination.
With a program of exhibitions and events, the HGB is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Academy for Transcultural Exchange and reflecting on its past and present. The social and political landscape has changed fundamentally since 2016. Funding programs that made the establishment of the academy possible have largely expired or are threatened by cuts. Programs for refugee students have been discontinued at many universities. At the same time, concepts such as internationalization and diversity are gaining importance in higher education policy, while refugeeism, 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 program also looks to the future. Former and current members of the Academy for Transcultural Exchange will come together with guests from the arts, academia, and higher education in lectures, discussions, workshops, and an exhibition. The focus will be on the future of the Academy for Transcultural Exchange at the HGB and the question of which artistic and institutional practices facilitate transcultural exchange.
All events take place at the HGB Gallery (Wächterstr. 11, 04107 Leipzig)
Thu 15 Oct 2026 History
13:30 Welcome
Commission Academy for Transcultural Exchange
13:45 pm Dialogue (ger)
Esraa Dayrwan & Musafer Qassim Khalaf: Things We See, Things We Have Seen
We will discuss what it is like to work from memory – how the images we create arise from scenes we have experienced ourselves or heard about. At the same time, we’d like to look ahead to explore how upcoming themes and the power of hope will shape our future visions.
14:45 Break
15:00–18:00 Workshop (ger)
Anna Sabel & Mehmet Arbag / Verband binationale Familien und Partnerschaften, iaf e.V.: Stories of racism and anti-racism in Germany: trends, continuities and resistance over the last ten years
Since the so-called ‘Long Summer of Migration’ in 2015/16, there have been varying trends in racist conditions and anti-racist struggles and strategies. This workshop examines key events and movements, exploring their continuities, ruptures and legacies in today’s migration society.
The workshop will be held in German and is organised by the Association of Binational Families and Partnerships. The number of participants is limited to 30. Please register by emailing ex_changing@hgb-leipzig.de with the subject line ‘Workshop’, stating the names of the participants.
Fri 16 Oct 2026 Institution
16:30 Welcome
Commission Academy for Transcultural Exchange
16:45 Lecture (ger)
Carmen Mörsch: Space Invaders Unite!
Ten years ago, the HGB Leipzig opened up rapid access to the art college for refugee artists through the Academy for Transcultural Exchange. Today, the AtA continues to exist without any financial backing, in a federal state where a party classified as definitively far-right receives almost a third of the vote. This lecture takes this anniversary as an opportunity to examine the role of the art college as an institution.
It is based on the thesis that art colleges have historically been sites of epistemic violence. Drawing on Nirmal Puwar’s concept of ‘Space Invaders’, he describes the ontological fear with which institutions react to bodies that are not intended to be there. The findings of the Art.School.Differences research project show how this fear manifests itself today in admissions procedures, curricula and a form of internationalisation that ignores forced migration.
The lecture concludes with a call for networking: for coalitions that transcend differences, for alliances of ‘unlearning’, and for an institution that regards programmes such as AtA not as an additional service, but as part of its remit.
17:45 Dialogue workshop (ger + eng)
Dariia Hyrb & Samaneh Nikfard: When we don’t know what to say to each other
This dialogue workshop led by Dariia and Samaneh explores real, everyday stories of encounters and interactions within and beyond academia. Using Mentimeter, we invite participants to share personal moments from their encounters and gradually create a shared map — to see what emerges between people when different experiences, languages, contexts and perspectives come together.
18:45 Break
19:00 Exhibition opening & 10th-anniversary celebration of the Academy for Transcultural Exchange
Speakers: Agnes Wegner, Rektorin HGB
Kommission Akademie für transkulturellen Austausch
Ex/Changing Letters
The idea of a letter sounds anachronistic, like something out of step with the times. It requires effort; it involves analog processes that establish or restore relationships. Letters can be art—think of the Mail Art movement of the 1970s and the artists’ desire to network, to question rigid models of authorship, and to make production processes visible. What results from Exchanging Letters may be art, but it doesn’t have to be. The exhibition’s true purpose is the invitation—personally addressed, handwritten—and the friendly request to respond. Any form of response is welcome: a sketch, an artistic work, a critical commentary on, or a love letter to the Academy for Transcultural Exchange at the HGB Leipzig.
Exhibition: 16–22 October 2026 | HGB Gallery | Opening hours: Tue–Thu 12:00–18:00
19:30 Story-sharing session (ger + eng)
Memories for the Future
A forum for sharing diverse memories of the past ten years of the Academy for Transcultural Exchange. Instead of welcome addresses, we are collecting stories from people who have been and continue to be involved in the Academy for Transcultural Exchange. Students and former students, university staff from teaching and administration, and representatives of participating institutions will share their own brief memories. What stories can be told about the time when the Academy was founded? What memories do people have of their studies? How was it even possible to bring this project to fruition? What do we want to remember for the future?
>>> afterwards: To Fabek & Ossama Shalgheen:
Snacks / Refreshments, DJ: dots.lines_
Sat 17 Oct 2026 Practices of Resistance
13:00 Welcome Commission Academy for Transcultural Exchange
13:15 Dialogue (eng)
Ehab Assadi & Rami Hariri: AtA as a beautiful picture: Reflection Session
Beauty is never entirely fixed or universal; that is what we quickly learnt whilst studying at the HGB. In a similar way, the idea of success is often measured against a particular image of what is best. These standards are often not chosen or reflected upon because they stem from a hierarchical framework. But that does not necessarily mean we do not know how to create a space for collective reflection.
That is what we will be doing in our session: with the benefit of hindsight, we will look back at the journey of the AtA programme, examining both its internal and external aspects. We can share some of our own thoughts and hope to explore the idea of positive progress for the future.
14:45 Break
14:30 Roundtable (ger)
Havîn Al-Sîndy & Simin Jawabreh: Resistance from here
Moderator: Mehmet Arbag / Verband binationale Familien und Partnerschaften, iaf e.V.
What does it mean to be in resistance when one’s own resistance is directly linked to a place where war, violence and political oppression prevail? How does resistance change when it takes place from within the diaspora? At a physical distance, yet at the same time in immediate political and emotional proximity?
In conversation with Havîn Al-Sîndy and Simin Jawabreh, we explore forms of resistance at the intersection of art, activism and political organisation. We ask what it means to continue, raise awareness of and help shape struggles from within the diaspora. What forms can resistance take when immediate opportunities for action are limited? Where are its boundaries? What directions can be pursued when one’s own political practice is always linked to the question of what is happening elsewhere? And what does it mean to remain capable of action despite experiencing a sense of powerlessness?
16:00 Break
16:15 Dialogue (ger)
Raisan Hameed & Raneem Matouk: This is not an Artist Talk
Two Perspectives.
Images, questions, and something that isn't so easy to explain. A performative dialogue about what emerges between seeing, thinking, and answering.
What exactly is happening?
18:30 Welcome
Commission Academy for Transcultural Exchange
18:45 Dialogue (ger + eng)
Isabella Friedrich & Natascha Frankenberg: Transculturalism at the art college
When the Academy for Transcultural Exchange was given a name, the concept of transculturality was established as central to the institution. What possibilities does this concept open up for the work of an art academy? Drawing on the work of Wolfgang Welsch, Fernando Ortiz, and Gloria Anzaldúa, we understand transculturality not as an encounter between clearly distinct cultures, but as a process in which cultural references, identities, and forms of knowledge undergo transformation. The art college thus becomes a place where such processes become visible in artistic practices, relationships, forms of knowledge production, and institutional structures. Especially in light of current nationalist and xenophobic policies, the question arises as to what potential transcultural thinking can unleash for the college. Where does the academy itself reproduce notions of closed entities, and where do spaces emerge for the unfinished, the contradictory, and the ever-changing? Transculturality would then not simply be a description of diversity, but a perspective on the question of how an art academy can itself be set in motion through encounter.
>>> afterwards at excafé (HGB Leipzig)
Solidarity party for Umerigu
Umerigu is a diasporic, queer, and neurodivergent community of artists living and working in a community-based artistic and cultural space in the west of Leipzig.
The event is being held in collaboration with the Verband binationale Familien und Partnerschaften (iaf e.V.), which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth as part of the federal programme ‘Demokratie leben!’.
The Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig is partially financed by public funds allocated by the members of the Saxon State Parliament.