EVERYBODY

Our perception of bodies is shaped by social structures and historical narratives. Personal, political and social processes are negotiated within and through bodies. Numerous movements of the 20th and 21st centuries have fought to make these structures visible, to question and break through them, and to celebrate the body as a place of freedom. In their book “Everybody – A Book about Freedom”, the author Olivia Laing explores some of these processes. Looking at the 21st century, they raise the worrying observation: “The victories won were hard-fought, but not secured for eternity, and now there is a threat of a relapse into conditions we thought we had overcome.”

Inspired by Laing’s book, the group exhibition everybody takes its cue from this premise. The artworks on display focus on the body not as a static category, but as a dynamic construct shaped by social, historical and emotional imprints. In their works, the participating artists reflect upon and imagine both individual and collective body politics. Through their objects and installations, they create spaces of experience for radical vulnerability, connectedness, autonomy and resistance. This gives rise to an open space for negotiation, in which bodies are not merely depicted, but felt, challenged and celebrated. In Georg Kolbe’s historic studio house, this exploration resonates particularly strongly: whilst Kolbe’s modern sculptures in the museum garden depict a normative, often heroic and idealised body, the artists in the exhibition space counter this with resistant, vulnerable and diverse conceptions of the body.

everybody is an attempt to rethink the body and imagine it within utopian contexts.

Featuring Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, EVA & ADELE, Carolyn Lazard, Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju, Janne Kummer, Luís Lázaro Matos and Lauryn Youden.

At the performance festival of the same name on 13 September 2026, the themes of the exhibition will be expanded to include live performances. The festival will take place as part of Berlin Art Week 2026.

Curated by Eva da Silva Antunes Alves.