Select Exhibitions
- The Architecture of Transformation
- The Architecture of Confinement
- The Architecture of Deception

The exhibition trilogy The Architecture of assembles artworks that explore the fault lines between art and architecture. Taking its departure point from the building that houses BNKR itself, it responds to the changes in architectural appearance and appropriation since it’s construction as a WWII bunker until its current function as a residential space. With a diverse range of artworks and site-specific commissions, The Architecture of is intended as a spatial experience that encourages the viewer to critically reflect on the complex relationship between the physical and psychological dimensions of our lived realities.

Munich, Germany (The Architecture of Deception)
3 March 2020 – 20 December 2020
Munich, Germany (The Architecture of Confinement)
February 2021 – July 2021
Munich, Germany (The Architecture of Transformation)
September 2021 – December 2021

The exhibition “I put a spell on you” explores a diverse range of models that artists have adopted to create artworks collaboratively. Contrary to how they are commonly acknowledged, some form of collaboration is inherent to every artwork. But it is only when artists formally present and brand themselves as a duo or a collective, that we are acutely made aware of the creative exchange underlying the realization of that joint creation.

Savannah, USA
8 October 2020 – 31 January 2021

Marking the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, this thematic group exhibition brings together 28 international artists whose work engages with various forms of division within society. Engaging directly with the historically charged location of the Gropius Bau, the exhibition features a wide range of artworks comprising a number of new commissions and site-specific installations.

 

Berlin, Germany
12 September 2019 – 19 January 2020

A site specific two-channel video and twelve-channel sound installation commissioned for the National Pavilion UAE that expands Nujoom Alghanem’s experimentation with forms of contemporary Arabic poetry through the language of film, providing a poignant reflection on the experience of displacement.

A look at five artist groups in five Arab cities across five decades

In bringing together 75 paintings and works on paper by 29 artists, this exhibition provides a fresh perspective on the contradictions, antagonisms, accomplishments, as well as the commonalities of five modernist schools throughout five decades of rigorous negotiation and creation across five cities in the Arab world.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates
20–24 March, 2018

Taking its cue from John Berger’s 1972 groundbreaking text on visual culture, Ways of Seeing is an international group exhibition that explores the various formalistic strategies that artists employ to re-configure our perception of the world. It brings together more than 30 artists and artist collectives with 70 works ranging from 1000 BC to the present and spanning a variety of media from painting, sculpture and photography to sound, film and installation.

Istanbul, Turkey
2 June 2017 – 13 August 2017
22 September 2017 – 18 February 2018
3 September 2018 – January 2019
Marking the 4th edition of Jeddah 21, 39, this exhibition is conceived as an educational platform that explores the notion of travel as a vehicle for learning and growth. Safar features creative projects, mostly new commissions, by 16 emerging artists from Saudi Arabia, alongside 8 immersive new-media installations by leading international artists, as well as more than 50 public events and workshops.
1 February 2017 – 5 May 2017
Rupture, War and Surrealism in Egypt (1938–1948)

Building on several years of in-depth academic and field research, this exhibition marks a historic presentation of this hitherto undocumented and little-known chapter in the art history of Surrealism and its negotiation within Egypt.

19 October 2016 – 16 January 2017
14 February 2017 – 28 May 2017
15 July 2017 – 15 October 2017
Liverpool, U.K.
17 November 2017 – 18 March 2018
Stockholm, Sweden
28 April 2018 – 12 August 2018
Dansaekhwa and Korean Abstraction

This exhibition is the first comprehensive presentation in Europe of a generation of loosely affiliated Korean artists whose negotiation of abstraction has become known as Dansaekhwa. It brings together more than fifty seminal paintings from international museum and private collections, ranging from the 1960s until the 1980s.

20 February 2016 – 24 April 2016
The relation of space and image in video art

Through 12 seminal video installations by leading figures of video art, this exhibition explores the link between films seen in traditional cinema settings, and those that are experienced as an installation within a museum space. With works that date from the early 1990s until today, the exhibition illustrates how over the past two decades video artists have been redefining the relation between the projected image and the physical space in which it is presented.

29 January 2016 – 17 April 2016
A New Generation of Beirut Artists

An exhibition introducing a new generation of emerging artists connected to the city of Beirut, taking the departure point from the artists as clandestine observers rather than public commentators.

 

London, United Kingdom
11 July 2015 – 22 August 2015
Madrid, Spain
17 September 2015 – 22 November 2015
Cordoba, Spain
10 December 2015 – 28 February 2016
Oum Kulthoum and Lee Nan-Young

An international group exhibition with eighteen artists working in a diverse range of media based on a fictitious encounter between the two famous singers that almost met in Paris in 1967.

Gwangju, South Korea
16 May – 13 July 2014
Turbulence
Solo exhibition featuring over 80 works in the artist’s most comprehensive show to date in the Arab world, spanning three decades of work.
7 February – 18 May 2014
The Human Condition
The first major retrospective of this leading Lebanese modernist artist, organized on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of his passing. Includes over 300 artworks and archival documents, providing an entry into the study of alternative modernities at large.
21 November 2013 – 6 January 2014
Letter to A Refusing Pilot
A new commission and solo presentation questioning Lebanese society’s contested relationship with Israel through recent historical events that overlap with personal accounts from the artist’s childhood.
The Making of the Artwork by the Artist, the Museum and the Public

Employing the Nefertiti bust as a metaphorical thread, the exhibition explores how an artwork can become a tool for the writing of much-contested narratives that serve as frameworks through which an image of another culture can be imagined and consequently fixed. Features over 40 artists, as well as pieces from Ancient Egypt, Islamic Art and over 50 support documents and catalogues.

17 November 2012 – 31 March 2013
23 April 2013 – 8 September 2013
7 November 2013 – 26 January 2014
7 May 2014 – 7 September 2014
23 Stories of Journeys through Time and Place

Told Untold Retold is a collection of stories each vividly expressed in a newly commissioned artwork by 23 artists with roots in the Arab World. It is the first and largest exhibition of contemporary art on this scale within a museum context in the history of the region.

30 December 2010 – 28 May 2011
Influences of Homeland and Diaspora on the Artistic Language of 56 Contemporary Iranian Artists
A formalistic comparison of artists based inside Iran and those having lived in the Diaspora since the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
15 March – 15 June 2010
Chicago, USA
24 September – 22 November 2009
New York, USA
26 June – 05 September 2009
Artistic and Cultural Convergences Between Italy and Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Iran

An in-depth analysis of personal and artistic relationships of a specific generation of modernist artists, in light of the historical, political and cultural connection between their homelands.

New York, USA
10 December 2008 – 7 February 2009
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