Exhibition Opening

The Kestner Gesellschaft is delighted to open Cauleen Smith’s first institutional solo exhibition in the German-speaking world on Thursday, 11 December 2025, at 7 pm, under the new direction of Eva Birkenstock. Titled The Volcano Manifesto, the exhibition will transform the entire Kestner Gesellschaft space. Families with children aged 3 and up are warmly invited to the special kids’ vernissage Höhlen, Banner und Vulkane at 3 pm, welcoming them as the very first guests.

The official opening will feature speeches by Heidelinde Gerhold, Chair of the Board, Prof. Joachim Schachtner, State Secretary for Science and Culture, Eva Bender, Head of Culture & Education, and Eva Birkenstock, Director and Curator of the exhibition. At _8.30 pm, interested visitors can join a guided exhibition tour__ with Gabriele Sand, art educator.

The exhibition title The Volcano Manifesto refers to Smith’s three film works My Caldera (2022), Mines to Caves (2023), and The Deep West Assembly (2024), which together offer complex meditations on geological and cinematic time, the abyss of volcanoes, and the womb of mines and caves. Over the past two decades, Smith has developed a lyrically visual and politically engaged practice at the intersection of independent film and contemporary art. In addition to her films, she produces drawings, sculptures, text objects, assemblages, and performative processions, all of which she brings together in multi-layered installations. Cauleen Smith (b. 1967 in Riverside, California) lives in Los Angeles, where she is a Professor of Fine Arts at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).

The project Passage III: To Repel Ghosts accompanies Smith’s exhibition and addresses its key themes: utopian visions of community and society, extractivism, memory politics, and identity processes in the Black diaspora. The focus is on exhibitions by Isaac Julien, Helen Cammock, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Diedrick Brackens, Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju, and Chris Ofili at the Kestner Gesellschaft. In the Passage room, the exhibition program, educational formats such as kestnerkids, and a newly installed archival display come together.

The entire opening evening will be accompanied musically by Eric D. Clark with a new DJ set, and the Lieblingsbar will provide refreshments for all guests.

We look forward to welcoming you!