Susan Hiller’s Visionary Survey Opens in Berlin

The threshold between the rational and the mysterious has long held particular fascination for those artists brave enough to venture there, and Susan Hiller stands among the most fearless explorers of that liminal space. Her retrospective at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin gathers five decades of a practice that consistently refused the boundaries between the recognisable and the deeply strange, weaving together personal experience, collective mythology and the altogether inexplicable into a tapestry of visual and sensory investigation.

Curated by Emma Enderby and Liberty Adrien, the exhibition draws together an expansive range of her multimedia works, each revealing Hiller’s sustained conviction that the landscapes of the mind, whether traversed through dreams, trance states or moments of supposed supernatural encounter, hold profound truths about how we understand ourselves and the world. The works move fluidly across mediums: large scale photography sits alongside rarely shown paintings, while audiovisual pieces and sculpture create immersive environments that engage the viewer not merely intellectually but viscerally, inviting contemplation of fear, fantasy and the power of belief itself.

What emerges throughout is the portrait of an artist working at the intersection of conceptual rigour and emotional depth, someone who understood that the uncanny exists not in the distant or the alien, but in the intimate territories of our own consciousness. Her practice interrogates how personal memory becomes collective narrative, how individual anxieties resonate through culture, and how the unexplained continues to shape human perception even in an age of supposed enlightenment.

A Practice Without Precedent

Hiller’s significance within contemporary art practice cannot be overstated. She was among the first to recognise that multimedia approaches were not merely aesthetic choice but conceptual necessity, that the complex phenomena she wished to explore required multiple forms of expression working in concert. The exhibition demonstrates this with clarity and generosity, allowing each work its own space whilst revealing the philosophical throughlines that connect them across time and medium.

The retrospective marks a particularly resonant moment for such a survey, arriving in Berlin where questions of collective memory, historical trauma and the ways societies process their own shadowy histories remain perpetually urgent. Hiller’s work speaks directly to these preoccupations, offering not answers but rather the suggestion that such territories deserve serious, sustained artistic attention.

The exhibition continues at KW Institute for Contemporary Art until January 2027.

Imagery courtesy of Lisson Gallery (@lisson_gallery).