Emma Adler, Caroline Douville, Marven Rabe and Milena Wojhan

"Monströs" in pink auf grünem Hintergrund

Monströs explores the cultural significance of the monster: What does it reveal? What does it warn us against? Monsters give form to the formless forces shaping our lives under neoliberalism. That is where their power lies, Gothic and horror are not escapism, they are diagnosis. And in a world defined by destruction, they resonate more than ever. The more monstrous reality becomes, the more we consume its fictions.

Archetypes centuries old, the vampire, the zombie, the werewolf, keep returning. Their warnings shift with the times but remain fundamentally the same: exploitation, alienation, marginalisation. The artists in this exhibition reread these stories, asking what monsters tell us now: the return of a fascism that never died, or the colonial roots of monster narratives themselves.

Because what these invented monsters reveal and what they warn us about is reality itself. A reality made monstrous.

Featuring artworks by Emma Adler, Caroline Douville, Marven Rabe and Milena Wojhan.

Accompanying programme

About the artists

Emma Adler (*1980 in Besch, lives and works in Berlin) addresses the thematic clusters of original, copy, and fake, as well as virtuality and reality, in her expansive, multimedia installations. Her focus lies on conspiracy theories and the accompanying question of different levels of reality. Within the supposedly secure, or in unexpected disturbances, confusion emerges, serving as the foundation of her work. Adler’s installations can be understood as multifaceted experimental setups that question our views on the relationship between reality and media reality.

Caroline Douville (*1993 in Montreal) is a multidisciplinary artist working in Montréal and Berlin. Her practice explores the ways images carry memory, history, and cultural knowledge across time. From a second-generation Haitian diaspora background, Douville engages with Afro-descendant histories and examines how colonial archives, popular imagery, and contemporary media shape cultural memory. At the centre of her practice is an interest in the relationship between the visible and the unseen. Douville works extensively with images connected to Haiti, ritual, and the figure of the zombie. Rather than treating the photographic archive as a fixed record of the past, she reworks and reanimates these images through painting, image transfer, and material intervention. Her works occupy a space between document and fiction, memory and imagination, presence and absence, allowing archival images to become sites in which suppressed, fragmented, or unresolved histories can resurface.

Marven Rabe (*1998 in Bielefeld) works at the intersection of video, performance, and costume design. His artistic practice is shaped by an intuitive approach, which he combines with media-theoretical research. His work begins with themes such as power structures, queer joy, and the breaking of binary systems giving rise to idiosyncratic beings that move through a world full of contradictions. He earned his Fine Arts degree in 2024 from the HBK Braunschweig under Candice Breitz and currently lives in Berlin. He won the Yael Niemeyer Art Prize in Bielefeld and the 2024 Braunschweig LED Competition. His work “as sweet as gravity” celebrated its international premiere in London, Shanghai, and Chiang Mai in 2026.

Milena Wojhan (born in 1994 in Wiesbaden, Germany) lives and works in Berlin and Munich. After studying Fine Art at the ADBK Munich, where she graduated as a master’s student under Peter Kogler, she developed an interdisciplinary practice spanning installation, performance and photography. She also works as a photographer and retoucher and has worked for, amongst others, brands and magazines such as Chanel and Missy Magazin. Her work has been exhibited at venues including the Espace Louis Vuitton, the Kunstverein München, the Fotohof Winterthur/Salzburg and the Kunstpalais Erlangen. Since 2022, she has been an active member of NEUWORKSHOP, a non-profit multimedia collective for research and production. She has received awards including the Bavarian Anniversary Scholarship and project funding from the Erwin and Gisela Steiner Foundation.

Team

Curation: Carlotta Gonindard Liebe

Exhibition Design: Carolina Redondo

Graphic Design: Polina Zagumenova

Assistace: Philipp Eyselein

Invigilators: Hassan Elmalik, Daniela Schoepe & Team

monströs