Cauleen Smith

The Volcano Manifesto

The Kestner Gesellschaft is delighted to present the first institutional solo exhibition by Cauleen Smith in the German-speaking world, starting on 12 December 2025. Over the past two decades, the Los Angeles-based, interdisciplinary artist has developed a unique lyrical, visual, and politically relevant practice at the intersection of independent film and visual art. In addition to films, she produces drawings, sculptures, text objects, assemblages, and performative processions, which she brings together in multi-layered installations. Utopian concepts of community and community-building, as well as contemporary examinations of environmental exploitation, extractivism, and the identity-forming processes of the Black diaspora, form central thematic reference points in her predominantly cinematic narratives.

Under the title The Volcano Manifesto, Cauleen Smith will occupy the entire premises of the Kestner Gesellschaft. The title refers to her three film works: My Caldera (2022), Mines to Caves (2023), and The Deep West Assembly (2024), which together open up complex meditations on geological and cinematic time, the abyss of volcanoes, and the depths of mines and caves. Based on this trilogy, visitors will have the unique opportunity to engage with Smith’s works from the last ten years, including large-scale video installations, new textile works, a facade project, drawings, and a space for collective exchange and reflection.

The exhibition is curated by Eva Birkenstock, director of the Kestner Gesellschaft, with curatorial assistance from Emilia Radmacher.

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). Her works have been presented internationally in numerous group exhibitions, including at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2013), the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2015), the New Museum in New York (2015), the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, UK (2017), the Prospect Triennial in New Orleans, and the Whitney Biennial in New York (both 2017). Her video work Sojourner is currently part of the exhibition Utopia. The Right to Hope at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, which runs until 11 January 2026. Her solo exhibitions include Remote Viewing (2011) at The Kitchen in New York, Give It or Leave It (2018) at the Institute of Contemporary Art of the University of Pennsylvania, Cauleen Smith: We Already Have What We Need at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams (2019) and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2021), Cauleen Smith: Mines to Caves (2023) at the Aspen Art Museum, and The Deep West Assembly (2024) at the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo. Dusk of Dawn is currently on view at the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art at the University of Richmond. In mid-November 2025, a comprehensive survey exhibition of her work, Dawn Echoes, will open at Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town.   Smith has received numerous awards, including the Director’s Grant from the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts (2010), a research fellowship from the Black Metropolis Research Consortium (2013), a Creative Capital Award (2008), the Ellsworth Kelly Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2016), the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts (2016), and a Rauschenberg Residency (2015). Her works are also represented in numerous international collections.