GRAZ.- Two radical exhibitions on flowers and their connectedness to humans invite visitors to the Kunsthaus Graz. On the day of the start of astronomic spring the shows deal with the connection between nature and culture and are claim for more courage, humility and time. As the start of the Museum collaboration BLOOM that involves more than ten exhibitions, the Kunsthaus Graz is dedicated to our entangled relationships with flowers. As a gift and a gesture of love the shows extend an invitation to engage with a culture of fundamental collaboration.
Hybrid Pleasures
Helen Chadwick Supported by Liesl Raff
March 21–September 20, 2026
Chocolate, blood, latex, meat, and flowers: on the upper floor, the exhibition Hybrid Pleasures, which appeals to all the senses, is dedicated to the pioneering British artist Helen Chadwick (1953–1996). In a contemporary interpretation, Vienna-based sculptor and winner of the Austrian Outstanding Artist Award Liesl Raff (b. 1979, Stuttgart) supplements and supports Chadwick's broad oeuvre with her own current works. The two extraordinary positions are united by a fascination for living material.
British artist Helen Chadwick celebrated all that is sensuous in the natural world and the human body. She was a highly skilled maker who produced sculptures, installations, photography, performances, lightboxes and prints—working across portraiture, still life and landscape. Chadwick was a feminist and her art was mischievous, unruly and luxurious. She was interested in exploring the idea of “experience” to address issues connected to feminism, sexuality, disease and beauty. She sought to break boundaries around what is usually considered “traditional” or “beautiful’, and for these reasons, she experimented with different materials in original and surprising ways. With a playful sense of humour, technical precision and in-depth research she systematically challenged social, often female stereotypes. Far ahead of her time, Chadwick countered the exclusivity of the binary with an eroticism of the living. She frequently referenced the metaphor of the flower and the act of blooming—challenging traditional ideas of what is considered “conservative” or “beautiful” in art.
Raff’s sculptures—made of beautifully worked, hand-casted latex, metal or standardised stage elements complement the retrospective with a quiet sensuality. Her work responds physically and receptively to both Chadwick’s hybrid conceptual space and the architecture of the Kunsthaus Graz, opening up new, contemporary readings of material, the body, language and process. Dissolving rigid binary distinctions, they create visceral experiences and open up spaces of soothing ambiguity. The dialogue between the two positions follows the concept of hybridity—implicitly inspired by Homi K. Bhabha—and, through Raff’s exhibition design, gives rise to a “third space” dedicated to the processual and the living. Over the course of the exhibition, this space will host live events and performances that respond to and activate the shared themes.
The exhibition is co-produced with The Hepworth Wakefield and builds upon the solo presentation of Chadwick’s work shown there and at Museo Novecento in Florence in 2025.
Co-produced with The Hepworth Wakefield
In collaboration with Museo Novecento, Florence
Curated by Katrin Bucher Trantow and Laura Smith
The publication Helen Chadwick: Life Pleasures (English) includes contributions by Katrin Bucher Trantow, Laura Smith, David Notarius, Marina Warner and others. Edited by Laura Smith, Thames & Hudson, 2025.
30% Dandelion
March 21–November 8, 2026
Beauty, strength, resistance and resilience: 30% Dandelion reveals the profound connection between flowers and humans. After all, we share around 30% of our genetic material with them. Bringing together works by over 35 international artists, alongside loans from the museum's diverse collections, this exhibition invites us to pay closer attention to things that grow slowly, require care, dissolve and reappear quietly.
Both botanical specimen and cultural symbol, the dandelion is a species of remarkable adaptability. A sun-yellow medicinal herb and a persistent weed, it is capable of breaking through even the hardest asphalt. In the exhibition, it becomes a figure through which to reflect on fragility, resistance and the melancholy of a crumbling present. Alongside works from diverse collections such as the natural sciences or cultural history collection, the exhibition invites us to explore the familiar, beautiful and captivating aesthetics of the flower, celebrating life in this world. The works focus on resilience, recurring arrival, symbiotic cooperation and letting go, in a poetic, political and ecological sense. The dandelion serves as both a model of adaptive strength and a universal language. In the spirit of floriography, the historical language of flowers, it becomes a transcultural gesture of recognition and communication: overlooked, yet persistent and beautiful, it offers a symbolic vocabulary that resists normative constraints. The exhibition is based on the concept of 'entanglements,” as well as philosophical and ecological frameworks of 'aesthetic offering' (Elaine Scarry) and 'critical hybridity.” By this it is also linked to the exhibition Hybrid Pleasures on the upper floor which explores the productive and provocative forms of a polyphonic hybridity. As formulated by thinkers such as Donna Haraway or Karen Barad, the 'entanglements' we find in the exhibition are just as politically and colonially charged as they are cross-genre, cross-gender and intrinsically interconnected. As Haraway writes, 'We will be together or not at all.”
With works by i. a. Iris Andraschek, Suzanne Anker, Karl Blossfeldt, Andrea Bowers, Viltė Bražiūnatė & Tomas Sinkevičius, Claude Cahun, Regula Dettwiler, Spencer Finch, Barbara Frischmuth, Anita Fuchs, Yevhen Holubentsev, Sanja Iveković, Anna Jermolaewa, Markus Jeschaunig, Claudia Larcher, Jonas Mekas, Joiri Minaya, Ryts Monet, Alois Neuhold, Agnieszka Polska, Anna Ridler, Ugo Rondinone, Martha Rosler, Sonya Schönberger, Nina Schuiki, Elfie Semotan, Petr Štembera, Alexander Stern, Thomas Stimm, Michael Stusser, Neja Tomšič, Dirck van Rijswijk, Anna Zemánková and further loans from collections of cultural history, natural sciences or literature, the exhibition unfolds as a polyphonic exploration of the flower, its attribution and power of attraction.
The project is part of the collaborative project BLOOM, which will connect the locations of the Universalmuseum Joanneum from spring to winter 2026. Both exhibitions are accompanied by a rich live and outreach program.
