On the Threshold Between Destruction and Reconstruction: “Metaxy” at Akademie der Künste
On the precarious threshold between catastrophe and recovery, what truly happens to a city and its inhabitants?
One of the most ambitious and timely exhibitions of Berlin’s autumn season, “Metaxy: Between Destruction and Reconstruction,” takes shape around this crucial question. On view at the Akademie der Künste’s Hanseatenweg venue from September 10 to December 6, 2026, the exhibition derives its name from the ancient Greek concept metaxy, meaning “in-betweenness” or “threshold.” This state of suspension—poised between what has been lost and what is yet to be built—describes precisely where the exhibition situates itself.
The Weight of In-Betweenness
Photographing destruction is relatively straightforward. Ruins, rubble, and the sudden erasure of what once was have become near-ubiquitous imagery in a contemporary world shadowed by continuous conflict and climate crises. Yet the agonizing period of uncertainty that follows in the immediate wake of destruction remains far less visible: the years, or even decades, that elapse before anything new takes shape. Who decides what gets rebuilt? For whose vision, and through whose aesthetic sensibilities? And in the process, whose memories, grief, claims, or hopes of return are quietly erased?
Metaxy refuses to let these questions be swept aside. Conceived in collaboration between the Akademie der Künste and the architecture and theory magazine ARCH+, the exhibition brings together more than 40 artists, architects, and spatial practitioners. The selection unpacks reconstruction not as a technical or neutral procedure, but as an explicitly political act. As the curators emphasize: “When such questions are suppressed, violence does not end; rather, it persists in different guises through exclusion, erasure, and new dynamics of power.”
Three Thematic Axes and Curatorial Approach
The exhibition unfolds across three thematic realms titled Homes, Lands, and Times. While the Homes section questions who truly belongs to reconstructed spaces, Lands focuses on terrain that has been contaminated, contested, and remembered in disparate ways by different communities. Times, meanwhile, tests the validity of a linear narrative of recovery, examining how trauma resurfaces across generations.
The curatorial team behind the exhibition reflects a structure that supports this thematic depth. Led by the Academy’s Vice President Johanna M. Keller and Anh-Linh Ngo, the team includes Christian Hiller, Felix Hofmann, Markus Krieger, Daniel Kuhnert, and Melissa Makele.
Artists and Interdisciplinary Memory
The roster of participants reflects the vast geographical scope spanned by the exhibition. Marina Tabassum Architects, known for their sensitive approach to post-disaster housing production in Bangladesh, stands alongside Salma Samar Damluji, who has devoted decades to documenting and revitalizing vernacular architecture in Yemen. Tiffany Chung’s maps trace the layered displacements generated by conflicts in Vietnam and the Middle East. Eyal Weizman and the Forensic Architecture collective approach space through a forensic methodology, treating architecture as direct evidence of violence.
One of the most poignant works in the selection comes from the late architect Lebbeus Woods. Drawn from his iconic War and Architecture series, his 1993 piece Transformational City Plan with SCAR Construction envisions how cities, rather than erasing their wounds, might incorporate them as structural scars.
Space Itself as a Site of Debate
That the exhibition takes place at the Akademie der Künste’s Hansaviertel building is no mere curatorial coincidence. The Hansaviertel itself is a post-1945 reconstruction project that rose from the rubble as a symbol of Western modernism. Metaxy turns the very venue of its display into an active component of the questions it poses. The stone walls of the building serve as a reminder of who decided how Berlin would be rebuilt in the mid-20th century—and whose stories were left outside the frame of that gleaming modernism.
Art as Process: Why Now?
Metaxy is far from a static exhibition. Accompanied by symposia, artist talks, film screenings, and performances, the project keeps the discourse alive. Musical interventions disrupting the exhibition flow connect disparate spaces and temporalities, while staged readings and educational programs turn the showcase into a deeply participatory experience.
In an era when entire cities—from Ukraine to Gaza, Sudan to various other regions—are reduced to rubble before our eyes, the questions Metaxy raises extend far beyond theoretical debate. Reconstruction plans are already being drawn up by governments and international capital, often without consulting the people who once lived there. The exhibition serves as an urgent reminder that pausing to ask before the first stone is laid remains a fundamental responsibility of both art and architecture: For whom is this city being built? Which version of the past will be remembered, and which will be buried?
