We are pleased to announce Abdulhamid Kircher’s solo exhibition Rotting from Within, at Deichtorhallen Hamburg, opening Thursday, 4 June, from 8 pm. The exhibition Rotting from Within welcomes visitors with a sprawling panorama of photographs, texts, and archival material. The newly developed installation, 9 meters wide and more than 2 meters high, interweaves scenes, encounters, and farewells between Berlin and Turkey, through which the dynamics of a father-son relationship gradually emerge, like pieces of a puzzle coming together. In this presentation, Abdulhamid Kircher also expands the focus surrounding his late paternal grandfather. The father-son constellations in the photographs speak of loneliness, addiction, violence, and injury, but also of rapprochement, intoxication, touch, and grief. Kircher’s visual language – vibrant colours, high-contrast lighting moods and emotional frequencies – intensifies the immediacy and vulnerability of his subjects. The darkroom becomes a space of reflection and experience in which memories, relationships, and personal stories come to light. Accompanying the exhibition as part of the 9th Triennial of Photography, an accordion-fold booklet will be published featuring image sequences from Abdulhamid Kircher’s family archive and works from the series Rotting from Within, as well as a text by Nadine Isabelle Henrich. Curated by Nadine Isabelle Henrich, curator at the House of Photography. Curatorial assistance: Viktoria Rochambeau, curatorial trainee, House of Photography. 

Cecilia Edefalk has established herself as one of the leading figures in contemporary art in Sweden. Since the 1980s, she has developed an intuitive and personal body of work that, starting from pre-existing images and figurative forms, has gradually become more abstract in expression. Her practice blends memories, visions, motifs from art history and elements from nature. For many years, Cecilia Edefalk has been holding conversations with deceased artists – Hilma af Klint, among others – which she documents and incorporates in her work. The first such discussion occurred with the artist and writer August Strindberg, who appeared to her in a park in Stockholm, and who, today, has guided her selection of works for this exhibition. A compilation of the artist’s conversations with her deceased colleagues was published by Ersatz in 2024. Extracts from this book, translated into French, accompany the exhibition. Cecilia Edefalk’s art has always engaged with its time and contributed to the emergence of artistic debates. But today, with a career spanning several decades and a considerable body of work behind her, the clamour of the present seems silenced, allowing her unique voice to be heard more clearly. Her works are a concentration of life, of different techniques and means of expression, and of important artistic and existential issues. This exhibition invites viewers to discover a subtle and personal body of work that is . It reveals the way in which Cecilia Edefalk is continuing the traditions of spiritual and artistic movements from the North. The exhibition will include the continous loop screening of a documentary entitled Cecilia Edefalk, Jag är inte här, jag drömmer (‘I am not here; I am dreaming’), in Swedish with French sub-titles.