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Center for Contemporary Art

Logo des ZAK – Zentrum für Aktuelle Kunst.

ZAK – Center for Contemporary Art is a generous exhibition space for contemporary art and a meeting place for people of all cultures. It opened in May 2018 in the premises of the Old Barracks and it is establishing itself as a center for modern and contemporary art. In changing exhibitions, not only positions of contemporary art, but also the confrontation with the past and the location of the Citadel itself can be admired and discussed on 2,500 square meters of exhibition space. The museum’s educational and supporting programs, which are tailored to individual exhibitions, round off your visit to the ZAK.

Artistic Director: Dr. Ralf F. Hartmann (email)

ANONYMOUS DRAWINGS | This year’s Open Call is now open!

How does our perception change when we know nothing about the artist behind a work? How do we determine the value of a drawing when every work is offered at the same price? Where is the boundary between art and non-art?

“Anonymous Drawings” is an exhibition project that puts these questions into practice. The exhibition at “ZAK – Zentrum für Aktuelle Kunst” in Berlin, Germany will feature around 600 drawings by 600 international artists from January 30 to April 25, 2027, without revealing their names or the titles of the works.

Every drawing is offered at a symbolic fixed price of €250. Of this amount, €200 goes directly to the artist, while the remainder helps fund future open calls and exhibitions. The fixed price does not reflect the market value of the work. Instead, it functions as a conceptual placeholder for any price imaginable within the art market. It symbolizes the possibility of art existing beyond economic hierarchies. Anonymity is maintained until a work is sold. Once sold, the drawing is removed from the wall, and the empty space is filled with the artist’s name and place of origin.

Each exhibition is preceded by an international open call. There are no thematic requirements; the only limitation is a maximum format of A3 (29.7 x 42 cm). Biographical information is not requested. Selection is based solely on anonymized digital images. Only selected artists are asked to send their original drawings to Berlin. Participation is free and open to everyone. You can find the online form here. The deadline for online submissions: 27 September 2026 / 00:00 CET

“Anonymous Drawings” is both a conceptual artwork and an exhibition platform: a collective artwork without hierarchies that continually rethinks the relationship between art, the market, and the public.

For more information, please visit the project’s website.

Historisches Backsteingebäude auf dem Gelände der Zitadelle Spandau, in dem das Zentrum für Aktuelle Kunst untergebracht ist.

Applications

We are not accepting applications from artists until further notice. We assume no liability for unsolicited applications, portfolios and catalogs and cannot return them for capacity reasons. Likewise, we cannot guarantee a response for this reason.

Current Exhibitions at the ZAK Center for Contemporary Art

Experiment und Eigensinn

Opening: Friday, September 18, 7:00 pm

September 19, 2026 – January 3, 2027

Since 1997, the Friends of the Art Academy, the Mart Stam Society, has awarded the Mart Stam Prize annually for outstanding graduation projects across all disciplines, thereby transcending the usual division between art and design. The boundaries between the disciplines are often fluid: artists work with design methods, and designers draw inspiration from art.

The Friends’ Association is named after the Dutch architect Mart Stam (1899–1986), who served as director of the Academy of Fine Arts from 1950 to 1952. Stam was one of the pioneers of Modernism who viewed their work within a social context. His insistence on the social responsibility of artists and designers continues to shape the Academy’s self-image to this day.

The art academy’s 80th anniversary prompted the Friends of the Academy to ask what has become of the 182 award winners. From among them, the curators have selected 28 exemplary artists for this exhibition. Video portraits of the artists and designers add an extra dimension to the exhibited works: These portraits not only highlight a wide variety of artistic strategies but also ways of life that encourage people to embark on paths where the destination is not clear from the outset. This requires the courage to take risks, to experiment openly, and a dose of determination.

An exhibition by the Mart Stam Society.

You can find more information about the exhibition here.

Windstille Nacht

Opening: Friday, September 18, 7 pm

September 19, 2026 – January 3, 2027

The exhibition “Windstille Nacht” brings together two extraordinary Berlin-based painters, Ewa Finn (born 1979 in Warsaw) and Katharina Poos (born 1961 in Berlin), whose works explore the subtle, the uncanny, and the psychology of the unknown. 

The artists invite viewers to visually glide over motifs, visual references, and allegorically charged symbols, without seeking to define themselves thematically or in terms of content. Rather, their canvas paintings and drawings are ambiguous in the best sense of the word, as they articulate a (re)cognizable visual canon that nevertheless consistently eludes precise interpretation. 

In the works of both Ewa Finn and Katharina Poos, the figures move almost somnambulistically through symbolic pictorial spaces that offer no actual physical space. Rather, their intensity stems from both conscious and unconscious reminiscences of religious motifs, the visual worlds of Romanticism, or contemporary press photographs.

You can find more information about the exhibition here.

Pearls and Hooks

Opening: Friday, September 18, 7 pm

September 19, 2026 – January 3, 2027

The visual worlds of Laura Bruce (* 1959 in East Orange, NJ, USA)—as impressive as they are enigmatic—emerge at the fertile intersection of figuration and abstraction. Large-format colored-pencil drawings, glazed ink paintings, and color-glazed ceramics characterize this extensive solo exhibition by the Berlin-based artist.

Drawing on countless micro-stories—quickly executed, mostly small-format drawings and ink sketches—the artist has developed, over the course of some 30 years, an extensive body of work consisting of large-format drawings and paintings. The micro-stories serve as a complex reservoir of figures, motifs, and visual reminiscences for numerous series of drawings in which both the fragmented human body and symbol-rich worlds play a central role. Laura Bruce’s work is characterized by the art of combination—whether it be the combination of forms, body fragments, and arabesques in individual sheets, or the large-scale combination of multi-part works in clusters and tableaux. Added to this is a recurring dialogue with art history, as seen, for example, in the comprehensive drawing series *Perpetual* (2017), in which the artist engages intensively with Francisco de Goya’s *Los Caprichos*, a series of socially critical aquatint etchings published in 1799.

Thus, against the backdrop of a resonant space of memory—both subjective and cultural—visual narratives emerge that rarely culminate in a concrete story, but rather form fields rich in associations of pictorial analogies and correspondences.

You can find more information about the exhibition here.

Wenn Tiere sprechen könnten

Opening: Friday, September 18, 7 pm

September 19, 2026 – January 3, 2027

Funda Özgünaydin (born 1978 in Frankfurt am Main) draws on an extensive archive of artistic materials to create hybrid visual realities that emerge through the collaging, deconstruction, and (re)construction of heterogeneous elements. In a constant interplay between photographic source material, applied materials, and subjective overpainting, the artist generates new perspectives on visual conventions and established narratives. In the process, genre boundaries blur, as do the textures of artistic techniques. Two-dimensional works acquire haptic qualities, and analog media continue to transform into the digital realm. Questions of authenticity, aura, and the meaning of the image dissolve into visual impulses that, beyond rational approaches, place particular emphasis on the emotional experience. Surrealist strategies of camouflage, exaggeration, and irony repeatedly play a central role in a visual cosmos that is almost impossible to fully grasp.

With her exhibition in the ZAK lounge, Funda Özgünaydin offers insights into her wide-ranging artistic processes and presents both photography-based series exploring the relationship between animals and humans, as well as video miniatures and large-format paintings that elevate the chimera—the hybrid, in-between being—to a new medium for critical exploration of the world. Many of her works examine traditional structures and fixed identities in order to get a little closer to the question of the truth behind the surface in the age of complex imaging techniques.

You can find more information about the exhibition here.

Germans in Angola

Opening: Friday, September 18, 7 pm

September 19, 2026 – January 3, 2027

In collaboration with Angolan artists Mussunda N’Zombo and Bruno Fonseca, the Goethe-Institut Angola has been searching for the past two years for traces of little-known chapters of German colonial presence in Angola. Drawing on reports and testimonies from German plantation owners who resided in Angola until 1975, we present a universe of diplomatic documents, interviews with former workers, archival finds, films, and family testimonies from descendants still living in Angola, as well as contemporary performance photographs.

The targeted emigration to Angola never involved an explicit territorial claim, but was directly and indirectly encouraged by the German Colonial School in Witzenhausen, secret agreements between England and Germany, corporate headquarters, colonial associations, and even West German postwar policy.

You can find more information about the exhibition here.