Centring ‘Cities Within the City’, Skulptur Projekte Münster Announces First Artists for 2027

A former cemetery, a disused barracks and a community for people with disabilities will be among the venues hosting installations at next year’s Skulptur Projekte Münster (SPM), which will mark its 50th anniversary by expanding its geographical focus from the city centre to neighbourhoods in the midst of transformation.

Around 30 artists will show works at SPM 2027, which has taken place every 10 years since Klaus Bußmann and Kasper König first hosted it in 1977. The first five of these artists were announced today: Isa Tarasewicz, Hew Locke, Selma Selman, Róza El-Hassan and Oscar Murillo.

The 2027 edition is curated by the collective What, How & For Whom (WHW)— made up of Ivet Ćurlin, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović—and the artworks are being created via collaborations and exchanges with local communities, projects and institutions. Artists will explore connections between Münster and other lived realities, asking not only how social and economic change has affected the city’s different neighbourhoods but also how we want to live in the future.

A spokesperson for WHW said: “We are interested in exploring how open and accessible the city is to different people and perspectives. We want to shed light on the many ‘cities within the city’, as well as on questions of participation, inclusion, exclusion and community.”

Tarasewicz will develop an installation examining seasonal cycles and collective labour at Gut Kinderhaus, a residential community where people with different disabilities live and work. In the city’s former merchants’ guildhall, Locke—whose work questions the traditional visual language of monuments and memorials—will give a local context to migration, colonialism and inequality of political power.

Selman’s work will go on show in a former 19th-century cemetery, discussing globalised labour through the lens of marginalised perspectives, while Hassan heads to the district of Berg Fidel (one of Münster’s most diverse areas) to consider exile, displacement and the mutual support communities can provide.

Meanwhile, York-Quartier, a former military barracks used by both the Nazis and British armed forces at various points in recent history, will become a new residential neighbourhood. Murillo is working with local communities and food producers to create an installation with communal cooking and sharing at its heart, and to transform the space that is currently home to refugees.

Cornelia Wilkens, Münster’s head of cultural affairs, said: “For the 2027 edition, it is particularly important to us that the exhibition does not take place solely in the city centre, but consciously includes neighbourhoods such as Kinderhaus, Berg Fidel and the York-Quartier. In this way, new encounters emerge between art and the people who shape these places.”

Additional artists and projects will be announced in coming months. SPM opens on 12 June 2027.