What effects does the reorganization of societies have? How are urban and rural realities changing? How do we position ourselves as individuals in the present? What insights does the medium of photography provide?

The exhibition It's the 21st Century that Expects Everything from You deals with the current state and challenges of society in a present that is characterized by multiple upheavals and crises. Digitalization, climate change, and conflicts between social groups and states create complex political and social upheavals that are just as evident in the environment as they are in our bodies. The artists selected from the collections of the Art'Us Collectors' Collective deal with experienced and impending transformation processes. With their works, they counter the rapid image politics of the media with carefully crafted images and thus offer new perspectives on the beginning of the 21st century. Their use of the medium of photography is as precise as it is meaningful: while analog processes such as cyanotypes, photograms, or Polaroids reflect ephemeral phenomena and the ephemeral (Hovers, Stolte, Deubner), digital photorealistic drawings dare to take a look at the changed bodies and the environment of the future (Chabrowski, Clement, Sauer). Stagings for the camera are signs of resistance and fragile identities (Brotherus, Reimann), and the examination of found images testifies to a reflective observation of socio-political developments (Binschtok, Buth).

The exhibition title is borrowed from a work by the artist Paul Hutchinson, who himself refers to a speech by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In a speech in 1999, Marquez referred to the task of "young dreamers under forty to overcome extreme inequalities." According to Marquez, the 21st century is not a finished one but is just waiting to be shaped by us in a migrant society. Some 25 years later, this call is still highly relevant.

„The exhibition is intended to create thinking spaces for the pressing issues of the present. The works on the first floor of HAUNT address the changes in urban and rural spaces. The artists whose works are on display on the second floor are concerned with our positioning as individuals in 21st-century society. As we move through the building, our perspective shifts from our surroundings to our bodies and back again. When visitors leave the exhibition space, their view of their own reality will have changed somehow,“ hopes curator Christin Müller. 

The exhibition has been initiated as part of the European Month of Photography Berlin 2025 by the Art'Us Collectors' Collective, a non-profit association of private collectors committed to a vibrant exhibition and mediation culture:

"Collecting art is often a private matter. What is not uncommon among artists—working together, working collectively—is rather rare among collectors. As the Art'Us Collectors' Collective, the collective idea is
already in our name: a merging of four art collections to form a platform on which we act together. At a time when private commitment to art is particularly necessary and important." 

It's the 21st Century that Expects Everything from You will be shown at HAUNT, a new center for contemporary art and culture in Berlin-Tiergarten. The exhibition venue is run by a collective of artists and theorists with a special interest in a lively exchange on contemporary art.