Events
Cats rule the internet — and our hearts, too. From the Egyptian goddess Bastet to today’s meme stars, from domestic cuddly cats to majestic big cats, the exhibition traces what is perhaps the most versatile animal in cultural history. Featuring a selection of objects from around the world, contemporary artworks and cat content from Hamburg households, CATS! explores the cat’s many contradictions: from cute and useful to sacred and sinister, strong and independent. In doing so, the exhibition offers transcultural perspectives on the timeless fascination that cats continue to inspire around the world.
For the first time in Switzerland, «Los Four & Friends» presents an exhibition of Chicanx art in a museum. It showcases the artistic production of Los Four, a Chicano art collective which was active in California between 1973 and 1984. It places the history of Los Four at its center but expands into an exploration of key concerns of the collective which continue to shape the Chicano experience up to this day. «Chicano» refers to the chosen identity for people of Mexican descent, born or raised in the USA. Topics such as migration, bilingualism, hybrid cultural imaginaries, the question of the Chicano identity, as well as the wider social and political struggles that the community faces, are all interwoven in the exhibition.
The exhibition includes the installation of adobe bricks Supranational Bodies: No fly Zone (2026), created on-site by rafa esparza.
With works by Los Four (Gilbert «Magu» Luján, Frank Romero, Carlos Almaraz, Beto de la Rocha, Judithe Hernández) Alvaro Marquez, Arleene Correa Valencia , Gustavo Rimada, Jacqueline Valenzuela, Jesús Barraza, Laura Aguilar, Leo Limón, Melanie Cervantes, Narsiso Martínez, Oscar Castillo, rafa esparza, Refujio «Cuco» Rodríguez and Shizu Saldamando.
Native designers are not often shown as authors of their own ideas or images, controlling neither how and when their stories are depicted, nor through what channels and mediums. Instead, Indigenous existence has been historically reduced to iconography that supports the American mythos that its numerous and distinct tribes are dead and in the past. Mythmakers and marketing teams have long used graphic design to tell stories about Native Americans, First Nations, Métis, Alaska Natives, and other Indigenous peoples rather than with them, creating reductive, inaccurate, and harmful representations of a living, vibrant, and varied group of people.
Despite this, Native graphic art has a rich history that shows that its practitioners are not merely subjects of design but shapers of it—innovators who have created dynamic, subversive, and optimistic work despite centuries of cultural obliteration, land theft, and socio-economic marginalization. Through examples spanning nearly two centuries and representing over 60 tribes and nations, this exhibition reveals and celebrates design histories that have always existed alongside, despite, and in resistance to dominant colonial narratives, illustrating the full spectrum of Native life.
Brian Johnson (Monacan Indian Nation) is a designer, curator, and partner at Polymode. He is a co-founder of BIPOC Design History, an online learning platform, and has lectured and led workshops at the Walker Art Center, the School of Visual Arts, the Institute of American Indian Arts, AIGA’s National Design Conference, and the Rhode Island School of Design. His clients include The New York Times Magazine, MIT Press, A24, Nike, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. A 2025 Mellon Fellow at IAIA’s Research Center for Contemporary Native Arts and recipient of the 2023–24 Hyperallergic Emily Hall Tremaine Journalism Fellowship for Curators, his work centers Native-made design to combat erasure and decolonize the field.