Christine & Irene Hohenbüchler

• KinderKunstLabor, St. Pölten (AT)
• 06.03.–06.09.2026

Siblings can be a team or a daily stress test. Whether related by blood or chosen, it is often a mix of both. What do siblinghood and being a child mean today? The KinderKunstLabor explores these questions and, with the exhibition Siblings – awesome & annoying, presents works by internationally renowned artists. The featured artistic positions point to the special closeness between siblings: how they collaborate, invent things together through interaction – but also how they share, for example recognition for works created jointly.

Growing up as an only child or with siblings has a lasting impact throughout one’s life. How can generations strengthen their bonds today? And to what extent can art provide new impulses for this? In the exhibition space and throughout other areas of the building, the KinderKunstLabor presents a wide range of artistic genres: from audio and film installations to collage, photography, and graphic works, as well as painting, sculpture, and drawing.

Artists such as Lygia Clark and the twin sisters Christine & Irene Hohenbüchler have conceived their works in ways that only become “complete” through the participation of users in the exhibition space. Shared activity and co-creative work are central aspects of siblinghood. Visitors of all ages are invited to trace these processes through the artworks and to experience them firsthand.

At the heart of the exhibition, a central island designed by Yoko Gwen Halbwidl invites children in particular—from birth onwards—to feel, touch, observe, crawl, and experience siblinghood with themselves and others. Complementing this, portraits of siblings and friendships are on display, photographically staged by Victoria Tomaschko in collaboration with children from the KinderKunstLabor’s participatory committees.

For these children especially, siblinghood and friendship are formative: in sticking together, inventing things collectively, sharing and letting go – but also in arguing. “Awesome and annoying,” as one child from the Art Ideas Workshop puts it, succinctly capturing the experience that gives this exhibition its title.

With works by Sasha Auerbakh, Heiko Bressnik, Uwe Bressnik, Lygia Clark, Birke Gorm, Yoko Gwen Halbwidl, Hodel / Schumacher / Clavadetscher, Christine & Irene Hohenbüchler, Jiří Kolář, Michael Loewen, Andreas [LUPO] Lubich, Marianne Maderna, Soshiro Matsubara, Flora und Martin Szurcsik‑Nimmervoll, Felix Nussbaum, Precious Okoyomon, Anna Schachinger, Gert and Uwe Tobias, Viktoria Tomaschko.

Curated by Mona Jas in dialogue with children from the Kunstideenwerkstatt (art ideas workshop) and the Children’s Advisory Board.

KinderKunstLabor