From War Machines to Ocean Waves: Fiona Banner and Carrie Mae Weems at Galerie Barbara Thumm

The cold metallic language of war and the fluid memory of water establish a striking dialogue across two separate halls of Galerie Barbara Thumm as part of Berlin Art Week. Hosting two iconic figures simultaneously between September 11 and October 31, 2026, the gallery makes a remarkably strong entry into the new season.

Meeting the audience in Space I, Fiona Banner (aka The Vanity Press) pushes the boundaries of violence, language, and the body with video and sound sculptures constructed from military aircraft parts in her exhibition “Poems for Helicopter Blades.” The fighter jet hulls in Banner’s famous Harrier and Jaguar installation, exhibited in the neoclassical halls of Tate Britain in 2010, were melted down into aluminum ingots following the exhibition. The artist recasts these ingots into sculptures and picture frames; meanwhile, the video La Fin / Runway projected onto an aircraft canopy strips a military object of all its function, confining it within the ambiguous realm between weapon and image, machine and sculpture.

Passing into Space II, we encounter the profound world of African American artist Carrie Mae Weems, one of contemporary art’s most exceptional voices. Weems’s recent works enter into direct dialogue with her film The Long Goodbye, produced for the opening of V&A East in London. Exploring how bodies of water—from ocean currents to gentle tides—have shaped human history and transatlantic migration routes, the artist celebrates the new identities and cultural diversity created by communities displaced voluntarily or by force. In Weems’s lens, water transforms into a symbol of both separation and grief, as well as an unbreakable resilience nourishing global creativity.

Opening its doors with a joint inauguration on the evening of Thursday, September 10, the exhibition stands as one of the most multi-layered stops of the Berlin season for those wishing to witness the linguistic transformation of instruments of destruction on one hand, and the collective memory carried by water on the other.

Exhibition Note from NO-26 Editor

Venue: Galerie Barbara Thumm (Berlin, Germany)

Dates: September 11 – October 31, 2026 (Opening: Thursday, September 10, 18:00 – 22:00)

Exhibitions: Fiona Banner (“Poems for Helicopter Blades”, Space I) & Carrie Mae Weems (Space II)

Aura: A politically and aesthetically striking Berlin dual exhibition exploring the sculptural transformation of melted fighter jets alongside migration and identity memory through ocean currents.