Skulptur Projekte Münster has announced Czech curatorial collective What, How & for Whom (WHW) as the new artistic directors for its 50th anniversary edition in 2027. Ivet Ćurlin, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović, who comprise WHW, will be the first women to lead the sculpture-oriented exhibition in northwestern Germany, which has taken place every ten years since 1977.
The news follows the death of Kasper König, Skulptur Projekte Münster’s cofounder and long-standing artistic director. He stepped down after its last iteration in 2017 and passed away earlier this month.
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During a grand press conference at Münster’s LWL Museum of Art and Culture on Wednesday, each member of WHW outlined the collective’s vision for 2027. “We only had a chance to speak to [König] once but it was a lively and supportive conversation during which he stressed that for him, the most important part [of Skulptur Projekte Münster] is the artists, and the fact that the artists are given a chance to create ambitious and meaningful projects,” Sabolović told the audience. “These projects are then shared with the city and the public. This attitude is something which very much aligns with our curatorial thinking and will do our best to maintain his passion for artistic thinking and imagination and place it in the very center of the next sculptor project.”
Ćurlin then said WHW wanted to pay back the trust that has been placed in the collective by Skulptur Projekte Münster by first learning about the city of Münster, its people, and its history. “We have a few questions, doubts, and considerations that we feel it’s worthwhile sharing with you, to give you a more concrete idea of our starting points,” she said. “How has 50 years of public art impacted public space in Münster? What are the feelings of different citizens towards the presence of modern and contemporary art on their streets? What memories of artists, incidents, and activities survive in the collective consciousness of Münster? We hope to use some of the answers to these questions in our new version of the exhibition.”
Ćurlin outlined that the 2027 edition will address “ethno-nationalisms, nostalgic populisms, and fascism” which she said are “very present.”
WHW’s third member, Ilić, took the microphone and explained the collective’s plans for 2027 in more detail. “Learning again from decolonial thinking, we want to explore what traditions are meaningful in the countryside today and how respect and recognition could be afforded to them again, equally, rural gentrification, partly stimulated by the pandemic, is a pressing issue, with some villages almost abandoned by public services, and smaller farmers struggling with restrictive legislation and state policies, policies that force them into debt,” she said. “The condition of the soils of Münster an its region could be a topic of research as well. Fundamental as the soil is to the use of land and the kinds of social life it nurtures, looking across the border to the. Netherlands would also be worthwhile in this regard, while imagining a post-capitalist rebuilding of biodiversity in collaboration with farmers, new rural dwellers, and more than human life.”
Skulptur Projekte Münster, the Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe (LWL), and the city of Münster consulted around 120 experts who submitted proposals to a seven-member international committee before WHW was appointed.
WHW says it has been committed to a pedagogical approach over the last 25 years after forming in 1999 in Zagreb. It members have primarily explored the connection between repressed history and “the pressing issues of the present,” it said in a statement. “The collective has been based in Zagreb for 25 years, leading the programming of institutions like Gallery Nova and the WHW Akademija, as well as working on projects in Istanbul, Venice, Ljubljana, Madrid, Beirut, Moscow, London, Athens and New York. From 2019-2024, Ćurlin, Ilić, and Sabolović were the artistic directors of Vienna’s Kunsthalle Wien.”