Iman Issa
Hamburger Kunsthalle, Germany
21 October 2025 - Spring 2026
Hamburger Kunsthalle is among Germany’s most important public institutions, and displays art from the Middle Ages until today. Through its permanent collection and special exhibitions, its mission lies in the education of the public of all ages and cultures.
The focus presentation and acquisition of two works by Iman Issa (born 1979) in the Atrium of the Gallery of Contemporary Art at the Kunsthalle Hamburg showcases pieces from her series Doubles: Photograph—(Un)Like (M)Any Other(s). The works posit a relationship between museum-like labels and lacquered metal sculptures, revolving in each work around a collection of two photographs from different time periods and geographies, but which share the same title. The work Lab Operator (2024) is a sculpture with a text describing two photographs captured by photojournalists, one in Egypt in 1943, the other in Iran in 2024. In Woman with a Wheelbarrow (2024), the text is describing a chromogenic colour print from 2024, shot in Egypt and a gelatin silver print in black and white, 1934 taken in the US. Issa uses a variety of forms and strategies to investigate the political and personal associations of history, language and the object. She creates ambiguous, poetic displays through the juxtaposition of text and object.
Iman Issa is an Egyptian artist who lives and works in Vienna. She is a recipient of the Ernst Rietschel Art Award for Sculpture 2024, the 2017 Vilcek Prize, the 2015 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, the 2013 Abraaj Group Art Prize and HNF-MACBA Award in 2012 and was nominated for the Preis der Nationalgalerie 2017 among others. Since 2020, she has been a professor of sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Recent group and solo exhibitions include Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Neue Galerie Graz; Taxispalais Kunsthalle Tirol, Innsbruck; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; MoMA, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Belvedere 21, Vienna; MACBA, Barcelona; Perez Art Museum, Miami; 12th Sharjah Biennial; 8th Berlin Biennial; MuHKA, Antwerp; Tensta Konsthall, Spånga; New Museum, New York; and the KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin.
This is her first collaboration with Phileas.
