Lupin, fougère, genêtis part of Susanne Kriemann’s Pitchblende-cycle (ongoing since 2014) and addresses the aftermath of uranium mining in Thuringia, Saxony, and, more recently, the Limousin. In this work, Kriemann portrays plants as independent actors, thereby challenging anthropocentric perspectives on post-nuclear landscapes, particularly in the Limousin region.
The scenography integrates subtly into the steel-skeleton loft of the Goethe-Institut Lyon, reusing a system of black straps and wooden beams to suspend three newly produced silk works. These translate the research into the exhibition space and are presented in close proximity to large-format posters documenting the overgrowing landscapes.
Also on display are books from Kriemann’s Library for Radioactive Afterlife, presented on a narrow wooden installation spanning between a room’s pillar, the wall, and the ceiling.
SENSORY FRIENDS, LITTLE COMAPNIONS taking a Friend to an exhibition
Friends are designed for WIELS’ youngest visitors to carry with them as companions during their visit.These soft companions offer a playful way to explore the exhibitions.
Photos by Leslie Ekofo, Raquel Echevarría, Emilio Azevedo
The scenography for Juliane Schmitt’s performance Pillow Talks was developed as a series of soft architectural elements, transforming both stage and audience space into an embracing environment. Softness is explored through bedtime stories, body memory, and the liminal space where sound interacts with fabric, creating a setting in which listening becomes a tactile, embodied experience. Soft surfaces extend from the stage into the audience area, dissolving boundaries between performer and listener. Musical devices are embedded in cushions and a blanket, crafted from leftover pieces of various duvets. Organic forms lean into one another, forming a quilt-like structure punctuated with openings, reminiscent of non-linear memory. The scenography encourages a gentle, intimate encounter with sound and space, where materiality, memory, and emotional presence converge.
Graphic Design by James Langdon with videos by Aleksander Komarvo
Curated by Franciska Zólyom Production by Julia Gerke
July 2025, Leipzig
The scenography of the exhibition Knochen, Pech, Natternkopf (Being a Photograph) was developed in close collaboration with the GfZK production team, using primarily the museum’s existing stock of wooden beams and materials intended for circular reuse.
The spatial structure draws inspiration from mountain landscapes and the support systems of mining tunnels. Wooden beams are abstracted into a skeletal framework that echoes the bone-like forms Kriemann associates with uranium within the mountain—structures that grow more fragile as material is removed. Fine strings introduce a tender, unstable counterpoint, creating a delicate balance between solidity and fragility. The result is a scenography that mirrors the tensions between extraction, erosion, and the quiet agency of the materials themselves.
Photos by Alexandra Ivanciu, Copyright: VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2025
TEXTILE SCULPTURE WORKSHOP making soft companions
October 2025, Brussels
This workshop, hosted at WIELS, emerged from the ongoing creation of sensory friends developed for each exhibition. Using found materials, participants were invited to engage with fabric pieces through touch and intuition. Three scores proposed different points of departure, suggesting gestures and methods for creating a soft companion.
RUDERAL COMPANION listed entities overgrown by wandering species
Sitespecific Work with Isabel Motz for Blauregen
curated by Lizzy Ellbrück & Louisa Raspé
August 2024, Berlin
Details of Solidago canadensis, Canadian goldenrod, on recycled tiles.
Ruderal Companion is a site-specific work for the one-day exhibition ‘Blauregen’ in a suburban villa with a listed garden. After the death of the artist, owner and resident of the house Magaret Raspé, the ruderal plant Canadian goldenrod grew in the garden. Ruderal plants are the primary vegetation in areas characterised by an intermediate state, a phase of upheaval. In addition to sandy, nutrient-poor slag heaps, they also inhabit the rubble sites of derelict buildings.
They grow on these anthropogenically created soils until the natural balance of the site is restored and thus more stable species re-establish themselves. They accompany the transition from the old utilisation of an area to a newly grown organism. Ruderal Companion is a reminder in a vacant residential building of the processes of change in organic matter as a companion to new conditions and their dynamic, emotional presence. The work relates to Donna J. Haraway‘s concept of ‘companion species’ and forms of remembering and being in living and dying together.
In Ray, Rock, Rowan (Being a Photograph) at Camera Austria, the scenography supports and connects a sequence of research works by Susanne Kriemann.
An unstable wooden structure—previously used in other contexts—partially covers the window side of the space, holding fragile autoradiographs and casting shadows on nearby works when sunlight passes through. A piece of yellow silk, placed between the double façade windows, subtly colours the light in one corner, altering the appearance of a nearby green-toned print. Tired wall panels stacked on the floor, supporting hung prints on the wall, refer to shifting landscapes, growth on slag heaps, and the geological layers of mountains, all in constant motion.
Three reading blobs, made from standard chairs covered in geotextile—a material used in uranium-mining regions for soil rehabilitation—offer a place to sit and explore related research materials. Light panels have been repositioned to reflect changes in the height of the space, adding subtle shifts in perspective.The result is a spatial composition that invites close attention, mirroring the subtle entanglements explored in Kriemann’s research.
Scenography & Production for Artist in Residence Susanne Kriemann at Universität Siegen, MGK Siegen
with Video installation by Aleksander Komarvo and Co-Production by Lena Fließbach
October 2024, Siegen
Hey Monte Schlacko, Dear Slagorg transforms the former department store into an immersive installation, wrapping the building in layers of large-format prints on textiles and papers. The photographs by Artist in Residence Susanne Kriemann, taken at different times of the year, capture the slow growth of mosses and lichens on slag, revealing the interwoven relationship between metallurgy and botany. The presentation references the building's architectural structures, with polygonal textile prints stretched across niches and in front of shop windows. The Béton Brut building evokes the texture of slag, while historical images and recent footage expand the dialogue.
The installation merges remnants of industrial production with the shifting consumer culture in city centres, creating a hybrid environment—Slagorg. In the evening, projecting from inside the abandoned building, video works by Aleksander Komarov complement the photographic works, highlighting the ruderal plants in Kharkiv’s war-torn landscape. Through these layers, the work blurs boundaries between plant life and human intervention, connecting the city’s industrial past with its evolving present.
Co-research Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou Curated by Julia Garimorth & Maria Stavrinaki
October 2024, Paris
Lupin, fougère, genêt is a continuation of Susanne Kriemann’s research on uranium mining in Thuringia and Saxony in Limousin, focusing on re-naturalisation processes and the role of supporting plants.
The spider-legged, skeletal scenography is inspired by fences that now enclose vast areas of the former uranium mining sites in Limousin—barriers that remain long after extraction has ended. These structures also recall the spiders that crawl on the ground in these abandoned areas.
This structure holds prints of lupin, fern, and broom, arranged in overlapping forms. Their shifting visibility from different perspectives evoke the invisible nuclear afterlife embedded in the terrain. The skeletal framework, stripped of flesh, speaks to both the fragility and resilience of life in a landscape shaped by extraction and its lingering consequences.
TACTILE FLIP BOOK
Public Engagement tools for WIELS
June 2024, Brussels
A booklet for endlessly flipping through structures that recall cracked glass and characteristic fracture patterns found in everyday flat glass or caused by mechanical impact. Produced in context of the exhibition ‘Crack, Nerve, Boogie, Swerve: The Archive’ by Alexis Blake at WIELS.
Photo by Raquel Echevarría
FOREST, FRST, T LIKE TEAMWORK intimately linked to our historical trail, they archive, they forest vegetation, they oaks
Scenography for the work by Susanne Kriemann Into The Woods at Kunsthaus Wien, 2024 curated by Sophie Hasslinger Dinge, die wir voneinander ahnen at Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe, 2022
The honeycomb structure serves as a scenographic element for displaying archival prints from Mihai Oroveanu’s collection, which were the starting point for Susanne Kriemann and Christina Morno Garcia’s research. These materials informed their collaborative work forest frst t like teamwork, a critical investigation into deforestation across Europe, with a focus on the intensive logging practices in Romania’s primary forests. The project examines the relationship between fast furniture consumption and environmental degradation.
At the core of the installation are four large visual poems—silkscreen prints created using pigments extracted from discarded IKEA furniture, specifically a table, and printed on waste paper. The honeycomb cell structure, taken from the inner material of the table itself, underscores the work’s engagement with the material consequences of consumer culture.
Washing laundry gathers repetitive actions, circular movements, and spaces for tactile knowledge. The wall drawings on the exhibition space, in the backyard, and in the laundry room, depict the movements of washing hands and serve as a reminder of the work of women* who washed laundry. They accompany the exhibition like the textiles that were passed from hand to hand. The exhibition took place in a laundry room and backyard in Karlsruhe, previously used for private purposes. Over 18 days, the programme highlighted the everyday manual labour of washerwomen and the societal stigma they face.
Through the act of laundry, the project explored the intersection of care work and wage labour. Grounded in research, the programme shed light on the city‘s structure, untold narratives, and blending of social roles and spaces. Information from archives and discussions were compiled into three leaflets: remembering, working and coming together. The exhibition was conceived through and with contributions from friends and artists associated with the University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe, who responded to the research and incorporated the metaphor of washing. The exhibition evolved from personal dialogues, creating additional connections and references.
With works and contributions by Jaya Demmer, Hanna Franke, Hanna Müller, Natalia Kesik, Isabel Motz, Miki Feller, Marie Faass, Vera Gärtner, Nina Overkott, Laura Haak, Corinne Riepert, Juliana Vargas Zapata, Leonie Mühlen Michel Dachner, Josefine Scheu, Nis Petersen, Moritz Schottmüller, Mona Altmann, Timotheé Charon, Sven Krahl, Nina Overkott. Supported by Prof. Celiné Condorelli, Prof. Susanne Kriemann, Prof. Dr. Matthias Bruhn, Hanne König, Dr. Susanne Asche, Communitiy-Toolkit-Workshop, HfG-Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe City Archive, General State Archive Karlsruhe, Documentation Centre and Museum of Migration in Germany
Photos by Mascha Dilger, Jaya Demmer, Nis Petersen
3 PRINTS ON THE FLOOR Drawings on insulation layers
The exhibition Munitions Factory - Exhibition on the History of a Monstrous Space sheds light on the history of what was once the ‘largest munitions factory in the world’. It illuminates the transformations of this ‘monstrous space’ and scrutinises the development of the site of the former munitions factory up to the present day. The research for 3 Prints on the Floor deals with remembering and forgetting this history and the preservation of the building. The site-specific work, which is based on archive material, questions the temporary and concrete forms of visible remembrance and the elements that are subject to active preservation. Above all, it questions which forms, structures and materials are protected as monuments in paragraphs and what is the subject of remembrance. 3 prints on the floor of the listed building outlast the exhibition and footnotes refer to existing archive holdings, thus providing access to the histories. The 3 screen prints will remain until they fade due to daily erosion.
INTERTUESDAY
foremost digital space for exchange, organised together with Matthias Bruhn, Constanze Fischbeck und Susanne Kriemann at HfG Karlsruhe
2020-2022, Karlsruhe
Intertuesday served as a space for transdisciplinary dialogue and exchange. Each session brought together students, teachers, and guests to share their ongoing projects, works, and research. The evenings were structured around three 20-minute contributions, presented in various formats—lectures, talks, conversations, interviews, or video clips.
INVISIBLE BODIES
Research Project
June 2020, Karlsruhe
The performance Invisible Bodies took place in a private backyard in Karlsruhe. As the invited audience listened to a narrator through headphones, red fabrics were hung on washing lines. These fabrics kept slipping off and had to be rehung repeatedly. They created a physical barrier between the listeners, only to become transparent again as they dried quickly in the sun. The text they were listening to was based on research into textile industry in Wuppertal and the female* workers at the dawn of industrialisation. It addressed the invisibility of their bodies in relation to contemporary patterns. A fictional narrator had observed a situation to which she* had no access. Silently, she* began asking herself questions, unable to voice them aloud. The performance explored modes of visibility and engaged with surprising moments of encounter—not only with oneself, but also with other participants and the surrounding environment.
WORLD WOMEN WRESTLING ENTERTAINMENT is a performative wrestling show in public space. The show creates contexts and associations that negotiate the practice of wrestling as a performative cultural technique while also examining the role of the angry woman - both in the context of the male-dominated, sexualised history of wrestling itself and in everyday social life in general. The scenography takes up the controversial history of the Stephanien fountain in Karlsruhe‘s city centre and playfully combines it with the typical elements of a wrestling match. (images)
Photos by Michail Rybakov, Klemens Czurda
1t QUARZSAND 0,1-0,2mm
Spacial installation at HfG Karlsruhe
April 2018, Karlsruhe
The installation includes a ton of quartz sand hanging in thin underwear stretch fabric. The fabric drapes over a 6x6m traverse frame at a height of 4m. Visitors are invited to step onto the sandy area and get in contact with the material. Only by touching the fabric bumps or moving through the space sand trickles through the fabric to the ground and to the bodies.The research contains an ambivalent relationship to sand as well as the invisibility and ghostly appearance of the material. Sand, in everyday life appears as an omnipresent but inconspicuous raw material. The universal utility of sand bestows it with economic value, while its shifting grains quietly carry echoes of time, memory, and transformation.
Photos by Dominic Thiel
...her scenographic work moves through the intersection of spatial practice, material storytelling, and art mediation. She develops scenographies for exhibition and performance that grow from a collaborative approach. Her research departs from tender encounters with space and material. Using what is locally available, she works with attention to where materials come from, where they go, and how labour shapes their transformation.
In recent years, leia walz has worked closely together with artist Susanne Kriemann at institutions such as Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe, Kunsthaus Wien, MAM Paris, GfzK Leipzig, Camera Austria. For WIELS Contemporary Art Centre she creates soft handmade companions for children visiting exhibitions. Engaging in tactile and imaginative ways with a visitors experience became a crucial part of her scenographic practice.
Responsible for content: Leia Walz Email: leia-walz(at)posteo.de
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