DÜSSELDORF.- At the center of the group exhibition I, etcetera is an engagement with artistic subjectivity as always processual and relational. From this premise, the exhibition also turns its attention to the host institution itself, considering the ways in which the Kunstverein assumes and articulates a subjectivity of its own. It asks how narrative strategies and speculative propositions, operating across artistic practices and institutional(ized) processes alike, participate in producing the relations through which the self takes form.

The project brings together new commissions and existing works by an intergenerational group of artists, in whose practices interiors, facades, and landscapes recur in both actual and metaphorical forms: as buildings and psychic states, imaginaries and projections, bodies and social spaces. A literary essay by Robert Glück is published in the accompanying exhibition brochure, while further contributions to the project come from art historian and critic Alex Kitnick, theorist and curator Doreen Mende, and curator and writer Fiona Vilmer.

I, etcetera takes its cues from Kitnick’s 2018 essay of the same name. In it, he describes the growing presence of the first-person singular in contemporary art, criticism, and literature as an impulse that signals a new conception of the author: an “I” that is less an origin than a continuously produced and contested site. The “etcetera” points to all that travels with it, from language and history to influences drawn from countless pockets of life.

This proposition of a mutable, plural subjectivity is explored through the different artistic positions in the exhibition and their negotiations of contingent selfhood. In turn, the artists’ practices offer points of reference for how an institution might understand itself. For the Kunstverein, this means looking to its building and archive, its exhibitions and public programs, its members and audiences, and the people who have worked within and around it. Its “body of experience” is thus dispersed across many actors and forms. Against this backdrop, I, etcetera asks: If there is no singular “I,” who speaks when the institution tells its own story?





“Reruns”
Since June 2026, ongoing

“Reruns” is a series of events inviting artists and cultural practitioners to engage with the work of others and share their own responses to it. Through situated formats such as informal talks, readings, commented screenings, and other contributions, the series creates space for more direct and at times deeply personal encounters with practices, guided by affinity, admiration, and curiosity. For the second event, curator and writer Maya Tounta will focus on the late photographer, author, and chronicler of Greek rock, punk, and new wave subcultures, George Tourkovasilis, and his relationship with the elusive poet and lyricist Emerson.

Maya Tounta on George Tourkovasilis
Thursday, October 29, 2026, 7pm