Nossa querida ex-aluna Bárbara Wagner (DAI, 2011) has been in collaboration with Benjamin de Burca for over a decade, creating amazing video works and installations in dialogue with other artists and collectives. In their films, the artist duo who live in Brazil focus primarily on cultural movements and collective practices that take place outside the established spheres of contemporary art. Till April 26th 2026, Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt will be presenting their first major solo exhibition in Germany. "The Tunnels We Dig" combines three audiovisual pieces created in different contexts: Future of Yesterday (Germany, 2026), RISE (Canada, 2018), and Estás vendo coisas / You are seeing things (Brazil, 2016). It portrays local, multigenerational music scenes that emerged in the early 1980s as youth movements outside the mainstream. These scenes developed independent cultural or musical structures and reference systems and are now being reinterpreted by a younger generation.
The exhibition centers on the specially developed new production Future of Yesterday (2026). This video installation explores the current hardcore scene in Germany and, in particular, Straight Edge (or “sXe” for short)—a movement that began on the East Coast of the United States as a “clean” counterculture within the hardcore punk scene. RISE (2018) is about first- and second-generation Canadians of Afro-Caribbean descent. In an act of self-empowerment, they use elements of hip-hop and rap to artistically occupy the public space of the Toronto subway. One of Wagner & de Burca’s first works, Estás vendo coisas / You are seeing things (2016), in turn explores Brega music from the Brazilian city of Recife, in northeastern Brazil.
About Bárbara Wagner