by Charlotte Alex // Sept. 29, 2026
An intense sense of tactility saturates the exhibition ‘Matter of Care, Care of Matter,’ currently on display at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof. The exhibition by the [ materialistin ] collective, made up of eight Leipzig-based sculptural artists, takes its title seriously: care, of course, matters, but it is also deeply enmeshed with the material world, with matter, with which the collective here enters into a complex dialogue. The artworks seem to beckon visitors to stretch out a hand and touch them, so rich is the vast variety of textures, shapes and materials, from immense coconut fiber nests to industrial debris originally destined for the landfill. Their tactility carries a feeling of urgency specific to our current times, in which the stakes for the ways we cultivate relationships with each other and our environment appear higher than ever. It acts as a reminder not only that we carry responsibility for the matter that builds the world we inhabit, but that we, the visitors, also consist of matter dependent on care, on touch.
[ materialistin ]: ‘Matter of Care, Care of Matter,’ 2026, installation view at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, works by Laura Eckert, Sophie Uchman, Agnes Lammert, Elisabeth Howey, Enne Haehnle, Theresa Rothe // © the artists, VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2026, photo by Jacopo La Forgia
A small entrance area displays one piece by each member of the collective, insisting that although the group consists of individual artists, their works are interconnected through a joint artistic practice, which they describe as founded on mutual solidarity and a lack of hierarchies. Here, a monumental furry worm with eerie human hands and eyes captures visitors’ attention first. The fascination of Theresa Rothe’s ‘Me as a Worm’ hinges on its ambiguity; at once cute and soft-looking, yet also uncanny and strange, it leaves unresolved whether it seeks to invite or repulse. Next to it, Agnes Lammert’s ‘Gorge,’ an impenetrable concrete sphere that opens into an obscure ragged cavern, reflects a similar tension: the beautiful and the lovable are inseparable from the vulnerable and the weird. Those familiar with the popular internet meme will be reminded of the question: “would you still love me if I were a worm?” In other words, what are the limits to our affections?
[ materialistin ]: ‘Matter of Care, Care of Matter,’ 2026, installation view at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, work by Agnes Lammert // © the artist, VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2026, photo by Jacopo La Forgia
It is this tension that lies at the exhibition’s core, as each of the eight artists makes material a shared preoccupation with the often blurry boundaries between the in- and the outside. Whereas the entrance area focuses on the collective’s communalities, the exhibition’s main room’s sprawling space singles out each of its members in separate zones, making their distinct approaches to matters of care palpable through their various uses of material, texture and form.
Lucy König’s ‘blossom and imprint’ constructs a domestic scene: a large, table-like steel structure is laid with plates, glasses and cutlery in a tacit invitation to a communal meal. Yet the table settings are carved into thick blocks of immovable marble, unyielding to the daily cycles of eating and washing up. Around these crockery sculptures grows a diverse array of herbs, vegetables and medicinal plants connected by an intricate watering system whose patter echoes softly throughout the large room. A small strawberry reddens, a cabbage sprouts; these plants will ripen and perhaps spoil over the course of the exhibition, while the instruments for eating them will endure in unusable permanence, perpetually awaiting a guest.
[ materialistin ]: ‘Matter of Care, Care of Matter,’ 2026, installation view at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, work by Lucy König // © the artist, VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2026, photo by Jacopo La Forgia
König’s work, like that of other artists in the exhibition, clearly engages with conflicting temporalities of the Earth’s finite natural resources, daily social rituals of community and an ostensibly endless human dominance over the environment. Its domesticity reflects tables laid in the homes of the exhibition’s visitors, asking us to pay closer attention to the way quotidian rituals of care and consumption are fundamentally dependent on natural cycles of growth and decay.
Gendered aspects of care become most apparent in Rothe’s work, in which more furry and fleshy creatures, adorned with single teeth and nipples sprouting coarse hair confront the viewer with the corporeality of reproductive labor. Works such as ‘cramps I-V’—five pink silicone, sausage-shaped beings carrying expressions of quiet concern—represent something between human and organ. Rothe asserts the body as a material site of constant transformation, which both relies on and produces the networks of dependency in which each of us is entangled.
[ materialistin ]: ‘Matter of Care, Care of Matter,’ 2026, installation view at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, work by Theresa Rothe // © the artist, VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2026, photo by Jacopo La Forgia
[ materialistin ] engages with collective methods of making art, decenters notions of individual creative genius and instead moves towards an understanding of art as interactive and cooperative. Their diverse sculptures share a critical inquiry into the boundaries of affections, bodies and resources. However, their exhibition also touches on how the act of exhibiting may itself open up spaces for caring encounters. The word curation, after all, is a cognate of the Latin root “cura,” meaning “to care.” The exhibition’s governing material language of tactility will invariably evoke an affective response in visitors, whether it be feelings of closeness or estrangement, and act as a mirror of their own caring entanglements. The task the collective leaves its audience with is to keep caring deeply, for plants, strange worms, each other and other matter out of which the exhibition, and the world outside of it, is constructed.
Exhibition Info
Hamburger Bahnhof
[ materialistin ]: ‘Matter of Care, Care of Matter’
Exhibition: July 3, 2026–Mar. 14, 2027
smb.museum
Invalidenstraße 50, 10557 Berlin, click here for map
