Lina Lapelytė Builds Time With 400,000 Cubes in ‘We Make Years Out of Hours’
Visitors are invited to participate in a massive, ever-shifting landscape of spruce and pine blocks that circulates through the museum.
Summary
- Lina Lapelytė’s We Make Years Out of Hours at Hamburger Bahnhof explored time, labor, and collective experience
- It features 400,000 wooden cubes with weekly performances based on poetry
- Ran until January 10, 2027, commissioned by the CHANEL Next Prize
Lina Lapelytė’s exhibition We Make Years Out of Hours at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, unfolded as an immersive environment that blurred sculpture, performance and installation. Commissioned by the CHANEL Next Prize, the project transformed the museum’s historic hall into a contemplative landscape of repetition and duration, reflecting Lapelytė’s ongoing interest in time, labor, and collective experience.
At the center of the exhibition was a monumental installation of 400,000 wooden cubes, which visitors and performers continuously rearranged to form temporary structures. Weekly performances animated the space, with songs based on poetry by writers including Etel Adnan, Mahmoud Darwish, Ocean Vuong, and Forugh Farrokhzad. This interplay of sculpture, sound, and participation reflected Lapelytė’s interest in endurance and transformation, as hours accumulate into years through collective gestures.
The exhibition highlighted Lapelytė’s broader practice of blending music, performance, and social commentary, positioning her as one of Europe’s most innovative voices in contemporary art. Running until January 10, 2027, We Make Years Out of Hours underscored Hamburger Bahnhof’s commitment to presenting experimental, cross‑disciplinary work while celebrating its own anniversary as an “open museum.”
Hamburger Banhof
Invalidenstraße 50, 10557 Berlin, Germany
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