Tomás Saraceno Looks Back and Beyond in Immersive ‘Ancestral Futures’ Exhibition
On view at Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany.
Summary
- Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno unveiled a new exhibition, Ancestral Futures, at Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany
- Running until February 2027, the showcase explores humanity’s entangled relationship with plants, animals, and atmospheres
- Two of the artist’s research initiatives, Aerocene and Arachnophilia, alongside a new land art commission created with Indigenous communities in Northern Argentina ground the presentation
Tomás Saraceno invites us to conjure up new ways of living in his new exhibition at Haus der Kunst. For Ancestral Futures, running until February 7, 2027, the Argentine artist transforms the Munich museum into a breathing landscape, alive with art, architecture, science, and Indigenous knowledge.
The artist has spent the last two decades cultivating an interdisciplinary practice that puts the environment first. Through his art, he reconstellates the relationships between humans, plants, animals, and atmospheres — spiders, most notably — proposing ecological models of collective living over systems of extraction.
Two of his long-term research projects, Aerocene and Arachnophilia, anchor the exhibition. Saraceno founded the former initiative in 2015 as community research on fossil fuel-free modes of life and emission-free transportation, which naturally led to sculptures made of air, solar, radiation, and infrared technology.
Arachnophilia, on the other hand, hones in on the extraordinary behaviors of spiders, specifically their elaborate web sculptures, which lay the groundwork for his similarly netted immersive installations, such as “Towards the Sanctuary of Water,” now on view.
The show also marks the debut of a major new co-commission, “El Santuario del Agua (The Sanctuary of Water),” created in close collaboration with the 11 Indigenous communities of Red Atacama, Las Salinas Grandes in Northern Argentina, probing into the social and ecological pressures lithium extraction has on the region.
“Ancestral Futures offers another way of attending to these connections. The exhibition asks what can be sensed when we stop looking at isolated objects and begin paying attention to the connections between them,” curator and museum director Andrea Lissoni penned in a recent essay for the show. “Here, futures happen because they are made together.”
The exhibition is now on view in Munich, Germany, until February 7, 2027. Learn more about Ancestral Futures on Haus der Kunst’s website.
Haus der Kunst
Prinzregentenstraße 1,
80538 München-Altstadt-Lehel,
Germany
