VIENNA.- The Kunstraum’s annual program 2026 focuses on the status of the fictional in art and politics. What does it mean to uphold the distinction between fiction and truth in an era of deepfakes, slopaganda, and alternative facts? How do storytelling and political imagination relate to one another? Which (future) narratives are popular at the moment and why? Besides the manipulative and demagogic aspects of fiction, the Kunstraum will explore emancipatory forms of storytelling and collective imagination. Under this year’s theme Fragile Fictions, the program comprises three group exhibitions, a series of live events, and a wide range of art mediation formats, many with an embodied and movement-centered approach.

At the end of 2026, Kunstraum Niederoesterreich will publish the book Instituting Performance. Improvising the Institution? together with Verlag für moderne Kunst to mark the Kunstraum’s 20-year long focus on performance. The book will feature theoretical and artistic contributions from artists, collectives, theorists, and art mediators in a critical exploration of the relationship between performance and the white cube.

The H13 Lower Austria Prize for Performance—the only performance award of its kind in Austria—will be the final highlight of our annual program. This year, the H13 will be granted in partnership with Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. In addition to the prize money, the 2026 H13 winner can look forward to a place in the residency program of our H13 partner. More.

She, Who Dwells in the Shadows
March 13–May 9 / Opening: March 12

The group exhibition She, Who Dwells in the Shadows, curated by Kinnari Saraiya, delves into the potential of darkness and obscurity. The show stakes out forms of knowledge outside official archives, passed down through practices of storytelling, embodiment, and cosmological imagination—from suppressed collective memories, historical blind spots, and myths to forgotten blueprints for alternative worlds. The intention is not to shed light into the darkness but to access it as a space of experience in its own right.

Artists: Morehshin Allahyari, Soumya Sankar Bose, Chitra Ganesh, Ulrike Königshofer, Kawanabe Kyōsai, Naomi Rincón-Gallardo

Guest curator: Kinnari Saraiya

Attitude Era
June 3–July 27 / Opening: June 2

Attitude Era focuses on the narrative strategies of populism and its capacity to blur the lines between reality and show. Effect is crucial—and it has to be spectacular. For author Abraham Josephine Riesman, contemporary populism shares striking affinities with professional wrestling: both rely on the collective willingness to suspend disbelief in order to become fully absorbed in the spectacle. Real is what is accepted as real. The artists in Attitude Era confront these dynmics by using doubt, fragility, and humor as critical tools to thwart the populist spectacle.

Artists: Alice Bucknell, Zuzanna Czebatul, Andrea Ferrero, Ndayé Kouagou, and more

Curators: Frederike Sperling & Pia Wamsler

Subterranean
September 11–November 7 / Opening: September 10

The group exhibition Subterranean, curated by Sarah Johanna Theurer and Aditi Kapoor, brings together artists who use narrative to examine the psychological costs embedded in contemporary infrastructures and commodities. The show examines the psychic frictions generated by the systems we inhabit. While these systems often reinforce social separation and fragmentation, the art works aim to reveal hidden threads and interdependencies. A distinct focus of Subterranean is time-based media and its capacity to create relationships across different temporalities.

Artists: Joyce Joumaa, Thuy-Han Ngyuen Chi, Valentin Noujaïm, and more

Guest curators: Sarah Johanna Theurer & Aditi Kapoor