MUNICH.- Ancestral Futures, the largest exhibition to be staged in Germany by the international, multidisciplinary artist Tomás Saraceno, brings insights from across the fields of natural sciences, architecture and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), integrating intergenerational practices and beliefs that foster reciprocal relation between human and more-than-human communities. It opened at Haus der Kunst in Munich on 17 July 2026.
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Tomás Saraceno
With texts by Italo Calvino and others
Explore Tomás Saraceno’s visionary practice through art, science, architecture, ecology, air, webs, and the poetic imagination of shared environments.
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Inspired by the thought of the Indigenous Brazilian philosopher Ailton Krenak, the future is nothing we need to invent—it is already here, woven into the landscape like a river. Saraceno rethinks connections with the environment through his works to engage with other forms of life, and to imagine eco-social ways of living together on Earth. Tracing the unique journey throughout Saraceno’s multidisciplinary practice, the exhibition connects large-scale immersive installations, drawn from his research and collaboration with human and more-than-human communities, to small-scale environments, featuring vibrations of spider webs and dust particles, to question relationships with the earth, water, air, and the cosmos.
Starting with the air-filled sculpture Museo Aero Solar (2022), a transnational work and wider community project that has developed collaboratively across six continents since 2007 and continues to grow as an open, process-oriented artwork. At the heart of the exhibition lies the expansive environment, Towards the Sanctuary of Water (2026), a reflection on the importance of water to life. The three adjoining galleries are dedicated to the cosmologies of the Indigenous Andean communities and establish a connection between northern Argentina and Germany.
The exhibition further features a landscape of intricate spiderwebs from the work series Webs of At-tent(s)ion (2026) and the installations Algo-r(h)i(y)thms (2026) and Sounding the Air (2022–2026); the participatory project Fairclouds (2023–ongoing) and the film Fly with Pacha, into Aerocene (2017–23), alongside stunning photographs by Tomás Saraceno taken on the Salinas Grandes salt flats since his first visit in 2006.
On the initiative of the Red Atacama network, an alliance of Indigenous communities from the Salinas Grandes in northern Argentina, Tomás Saraceno is realising a permanent work of land art, The Sanctuary of Water (2026), continuing a collaboration in a region the artist has been visiting for the last two decades. Haus der Kunst is contributing directly to this project, enabling the exhibition to have an impact beyond its own walls.
The structure, which is being built using traditional Andean methods, is due to be completed in autumn 2026. Once completed, it will belong to the Red Atacama communities and is intended to protect the salt lakes’ water from contamination and evaporation caused by lithium mining in the region. More than just a work of art, The Sanctuary of Water (2026) will be a place to celebrate water, enabling the communities to generate income from ecotourism and draw attention to their critical situation. The exhibition explores ways in which we can maintain the balance of shared environments, encouraging a view of water not as a raw material, but as a living entity that deserves respect and care.
Ancestral Futures expands beyond the walls of Haus der Kunst, opening up to the Eisbach River with the newly created Community Garden Ostwiese and the sculpture Cloud Cities: Species of Spaces (2023–2026) on the Terrasse Ost, providing seasonal spaces for communal habitats for various species, including birds, insects and spiders.
Throughout the exhibition, the landscape of the English Garden will become an extended playing field with guided walks led by experts from Max Planck Society. On site, open workshops will see the creation of a Museo Aero Solar, built from repurposed plastic bags. Finally, in the autumn, an attempt will be made to launch the collaboratively created solar sculpture into the air.
The exhibition continues a programme shaped by Fujiko Nakaya’s fog installations (2022), Philippe Parreno’s El Almendral (2024) and, in particular, the current exhibition Steina: Playback, in which landscape, atmosphere and the elemental forces can be experienced as living and interconnected systems. Just as Nakaya’s mist spread towards the Eisbach River and the English Garden, Saraceno too opens up the building to the surrounding landscape, blurring the boundaries between inside and outside, between human and non-human worlds.
Curated by Sarah Johanna Theurer and Andrea Lissoni.
