FUTURE ANCESTORS / SILENT MATTER: Ilit Azoulay and Alicja Kwade
LOHAUS SOMINSKY presents in cooperation with MENNOUR Paris an exhibition of two female artists - Ilit Azoulay and Alicja Kwade - as a contribution to this year’s edition of “Various Others“ in Munich.
Ilit Azoulay’s project Future Ancestors brings together images from open-access archives, ritual objects, historical artifacts, and planetary phenomena, approached as a shared visual resource rather than fixed historical evidence. Objects once used for accessing knowledge, healing, protection, and communication are placed alongside images produced by contemporary technologies. Past and future appear here as parallel systems for making sense of the world, coexisting on the same visual plane.
Each work is built through acts of juxtaposition. Images are positioned in relation to one another to activate connections across time, geography, and scale. These placements form constellations, where meaning emerges through proximity, tension, and alignment. The series consists of 17 digitally composed inkjet prints (ed. 1/2 + 1 AP), created between 2024 and 2026.
“To think as a future ancestor is to act in the present as if memory has already begun. The works function as signals: fragments of a transmission unfolding across time.”
(Ilit Azoulay)
Born in 1972 in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Ilit Azoulay lives and works in Berlin. Azoulay is internationally recognized for her photographic works, in which she reconfigures meticulously researched materials into new visual compositions. Combining photomontage, sound, video, and spatial interventions, her works examine how visual information is culturally processed while revealing aspects that often remain hidden and opening new perspectives within established fields of knowledge.
In 2024, she was awarded the Ellen Auerbach Scholarship for Outstanding International Photography and received a grant from the Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin.
Her work has been exhibited in many distinguished international institutions, including her solo exhibitions No Single View on view at the Museum Villa Stuck Munich (2026); “Mere Things” at the Jewish Museum New York (2024), “Stopover” at the Museum Villa Stuck, Munich (2024), “Queendom. Navigating Future Codes” at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Austria (2024), “Room #8” at CaixaForum Madrid (2023), “Queendom” at the Israeli Pavilion of the 59th Venice Biennale (2022), Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv (2019), The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2017), and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2014).
Ilit Azoulay’s works are held in the permanent collections of public institutions worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum, New York; LACMA and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Art Institute of Chicago; Centre Pompidou, Paris; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; JuliaStoschek Collection, Berlin; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; and Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv.
Alicja Kwade presents her work Silent Matter, created 2022 for her solo exhibition in Mexico and inspired by philosophy and natural phenomena. Constantly searching for new materials, Kwade became fascinated by obsidian for its historicical relevance, material properties and reflective qualities. She places two Kaiser Idell lamps – objects that frequently reappear throughout her practice - against the polished volcanic stone, creating a luminous depiction of the universe, with celestial bodies suspended within the dark vacuum of space. These celestial forms allude to what Kwade often playfully points out: that we are, quite simply, sitting on a rock floating through space. By visualizing otherwise unimaginable natural phenomena, Kwade reflects on humanity’s endless search for answers and the inherent limitation of our understanding.
From 1999 to 2005, she studied at UdK Berlin (Universität der Künste Berlin/Berlin University of Arts). Her sculptures, public installations, films, photography and works on paper challenge scientific and philosophical concepts by dismantling conventional notions of perception and reality. Alicja Kwade has exhibited at international institutions including Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk; Whitechapel Gallery, London; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA; Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin; Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Espoo; and Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich.
Over the past years, she has increasingly worked in the public space, creating vast installations that respond to the architecture and the natural phenomena of various sites likes for example Place Vendôme in Paris (2022) and Desert X AlUla (2022). Her works are part of numerous public collections, such as the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington; LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek; Mudam - Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg; and mumok - Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna.
