ESCHBORN.- The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation opened two new exhibitions at The Cube on 19 February 2026: “Worlds within Worlds” with works by students from the University of Art and Design Offenbach (HfG) and “Human Topographies. Art Collection Deutsche Börse” featuring works from its own collection.
“Worlds within Worlds”
The exhibition “Worlds within Worlds” is the second collaborative project between the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation, the photography department at the University of Art and Design Offenbach (HfG) and the Master’s programme Curatorial Studies, run jointly by Goethe University and Städelschule Frankfurt. It brings together 14 artists whose works explore the in-between worlds of our respective realities. In their examination of political, historical and social themes, the boundaries of the medium of photography are probed, altered and expanded. Nelly Habelt’s video shows bodies floating in seemingly eternal stillness. In Lena Bils’ work, cotton-like clouds hang blurred over bodies of water, and Tatiana Vdovenko reveals a view of a destroyed landscape through a narrow gap.
The works reflect biographical experiences, subjective patterns of perception and personal interests. Individual starting points are interwoven with collective realities and overarching themes, depicting the everyday as well as supernatural, hopeful and catastrophic moments, that explore transitions, thresholds or boundaries. Contemporary microcosms are juxtaposed with spaces of memory – of East Germany, colonial continuities or migrant resilience. E. Elif Gönüllü processes her experience of gruelling bureaucratic hurdles into prayer beads, while Charlotte Burkhardt documents the nostalgic vacation resorts of a vanished state. Urban infrastructures and human order meet the vulnerability of nature and lay bare a fragile balance. Social tensions, past and present, are processed visually.
The selected works reject simple narratives by contrasting populist black-and-white thinking with a wide array of grey areas. Familiar perspectives and certainties are destabilised to reflect the complexity of realities. The exhibition invites viewers to understand visual spaces not as closed narratives, but as open systems expanded through dialogue. “Worlds within Worlds” opens up perspectives on fiction and myth, challenging the promise of there being a single truth.
The artists featured in the exhibition are: Lena Bils, Charlotte Burkhardt, Simon Gilmer, E. Elif Gönüllü, Nelly Habelt, Philomena Hummel, Elinor Zoë Karl, Lea Kulens, Len David Oswald, Marie Schwarze, Markus Seibel, Madlen Strebel, Tatiana Vdovenko and Kerstin Weiser.
The exhibition was curated by Polina Arzhenovskova, Leonie Cecco, Fanny Dommers, Issata Drieling, Charlotte Häger, Antonia Janke, Egor Miroshnichenko, Alexandra Rücker, Mattis Thomsen, Max Zimmermann and Carla Veit. The collaboration is supervised by Anne-Marie Beckmann, Director of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation, Stefanie Heraeus, Head of the Curatorial Studies programme at Goethe University in Frankfurt and Martin Liebscher, Professor at the University of Art and Design in Offenbach.
“Human Topographies”
The exhibition presents 70 works from the Art Collection Deutsche Börse, illustrating the diverse facets of environments shaped by humankind. It ranges from dense Asian megacities to North American metropolises and small towns on the German and French periphery to the vast, sparsely populated areas in the Midwestern US – and the many variations in between.
The exhibited works depict the multifaceted interplay of landscape, architecture and humans, highlighting the challenges posed by nature and climatic conditions across different regions as well as the ways in which architects and urban planners tackle them. The spectrum ranges from the harmonious integration of architecture to a bizarre understanding of urban design, including the near-complete suppression of the original landscape. The photographic series, some of which took many years to create, illustrate the progressive and creative, albeit ruthless, creation of urban environments as well as the adaptability of the people who inhabit them. “Human Topographies” combines works from the 1950s to the present, thus creating a dialogue between images by well-known artists and younger positions.
The exhibition was conceived by Cornelia Siebert, Junior Curator, Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation. It presents photographs by the following artists: Verdiana Albano, Nobuyoshi Araki, Sibylle Bergemann, Peter Bialobrzeski, Mohamed Bourouissa, Alejandro Cartagena, Bruce Davidson, Mitch Epstein, Lucas Foglia, Thomas Hoepker, Evelyn Hofer, Matthias Klose, Ute and Werner Mahler, Vivian Maier, Mike Mandel, Richard Mosse, Jürgen Nefzger, Mimi Plumb, Anastasia Samoylova, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, Wilhelm Schürmann, Stephen Shore, Joel Sternfeld, Beat Streuli, Mikhael Subotzky & Patrick Waterhouse, Henry Wessel and Ulrich Wüst.
