by Carolina Sculti // Apr. 10, 2026
Upstairs at Akademie der Künste’s Hanseatenweg location, the exhibition space holds the works of 25 artists, each offering a unique and intimate look into creation in times of crises. The works were developed as part of the 2024-25 JUNGE AKADEMIE fellowship and are woven together by a shared thread: the exploration of our ever-changing selves, histories and planet. Curated by Clara Herrmann and Linnéa Meiners, ‘Vessel and Voyager’ refers to the themes of containers (the vessels), and the stories and individuals that travel within them (the voyagers).
Group Show: ‘Vessel & Voyager,’ 2026 // Photo by Joanna Wilk
The exhibition opens with Marina Naprushkina’s ‘Mama, How Much Longer?’—a 12-minute video of her children playing on the seaside in post-military Vlora, Albania. Naprushkina narrates Ursula K. Le Guin’s ‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,’ contrasting the destructive, heroic narratives that dominate history (with their exclusion of women and everyday life) with attention to the small, ordinary and mundane. The filming is beautiful: the children’s voices, stop-motion animation and playful experiments with light and shadow create a sense of wonder, while location-specific elements like sand and sea emphasize the inseparability of self, story and place. The film is a luminous, intimate introduction to the exhibition’s reflection on change and connection.
Marina Naprushkina: ‘Mama, How Much Longer,’ 2025, film still, // Courtesy of the artist
Another highlight of the show is Ilit Azoulay’s ‘Queendom,’ which continues the theme of de-centering male-dominated historical narratives. Two large-scale photomontages of medieval Islamic metal vessels hang on printed canvas, while the adjacent wall presents an assemblage of archival materials. Azoulay’s photomontages are delicate and abstract, a far cry from the hyper-masculine, Eurocentric origins of the vessels themselves. The archival wall is paired with a sound installation that was created in collaboration with a Palestinian healer. The voices lull viewers into a trance of contemplation—thousands of metal pieces that have for centuries carried traces of history, yet now arrive in the present.
Eva Dessecker’s ‘La Trama’ is a towering three-by-three-by-three meter wooden loom threaded with red thread, interweaving images and stones. The threads create a feeling of a continuity and interconnectedness, crossing and overlapping so densely that it’s impossible to tell where one begins and another ends. The loom, bound with linen resembling bandages and scattered with stones and clay, reminded me of both our resilience and our need for repair, and how our interconnectedness can serve as a path toward both.
Ilit Azoulay: ‘Queendom,’ 2022, Print, 150 × 204 cm // Courtesy of the artist
Where Dessecker’s loom traces the interweaving of human life, Sarah Doerfel’s ‘Night Scout’ turns inward and downward, exploring the depths of body and planet. Sculptural elements made from latex, metal and repurposed surgical instruments hang beside a two-channel video installation, while Laure M. Hiendl’s soundscape heightens the sense of exploration. The video immerses viewers in endoscopic footage of patients’ bodies alongside subterranean caves, blurring the perceived separation between ourselves and the natural world. In this work, our drive for knowledge is laid bare, but confronted with the opacity and complexity of the places we seek to know.
Later works continue to trace the exhibition’s themes: the body, care and the persistence of creativity in the face of challenges. Hrishikesh Pawar’s ‘If My Body Is a House’ reflects on movement and shared experience, pairing dancers with bodies living with Parkinson’s disease. Sara Stevanović’s ‘#WHATSINMYTRASH’ considers waste and what we discard, while Khensani Jurczok-de Klerk’s photo-collage series amplifies the voices of Black women in 1990s Zurich, showing how storytelling endures throughout times of violence.
Hrishikesh Pawar and Anika Krbetschek: ‘If My Body is a House,’ 2025, film still // Courtesy of the artist
‘Vessel & Voyager’ opens a space to sit with the conditions it gathers—not offering resolution, but a relationship with crisis, care and continuation. The exhibition at the Akademie der Künste will be accompanied by two events that extend its themes: the ‘Songs of Serpents’ symposium on art, ecology and ecofeminism on April 17th, and the ‘Echoes, Ghosts, Songs & Soils’ performance program on April 25th, that brings together sound, movement and storytelling.
Additional Info
Akademie der Künste
Group Show: ‘Vessel & Voyager’
Exhibition: Mar. 13–May 10, 2026
‘Songs of Serpents – Art, Landscapes & Ecofeminism(s)’
Symposium: Friday, Apr. 17; 1–9pm
‘Echoes, Ghosts, Songs & Soils’
Performance Program: Saturday, Apr. 25; 3–10pm
adk.de
Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin, click here for map
