Catherine Christer Hennix: Cosmological Critique at Badischer Kunstverein

Interdisciplinary Visions

The forthcoming exhibition at Badischer Kunstverein presents a substantial overview of Catherine Christer Hennix's multifaceted artistic trajectory. Active from the late 1960s until her death in 2023, the Stockholm-born artist created a distinctive body of work that merged sonic experimentation with mathematical inquiry, linguistic exploration and spiritual investigation.

Hennix approached her creations as semiotical entities—encompassing signs, diagrams, textual elements, and compositions of sound and light. Through these varied forms, she examined how perception operates and how meaning emerges, seeking to reconfigure fundamental processes of understanding.

Formative Encounters

Her practice took shape through engagement with experimental music communities in Stockholm and New York. Significant influences included composer La Monte Young and artist Marian Zazeela, alongside vocalist Pandit Pran Nath. Their investigations into temporal experience, acoustic phenomena and continuous states left an indelible mark on her methodology.

Concurrently, Hennix pursued rigorous study of philosophy, logic and mathematical linguistics. Her academic credentials included teaching positions at MIT's pioneering artificial intelligence laboratory, where she examined foundational questions about cognition and symbolic systems.

Exhibition Scope

This survey represents the broadest examination of Hennix's output to date. The presentation encompasses early graphic notations, environmental installations, abstract Nō theatrical works, paintings and sculptural pieces. It also addresses her engagement with transfeminist concerns and political thought.

Mathematical and psychoanalytic concepts appear not merely as thematic references but as structural principles embedded within the works themselves. The exhibition reveals how these frameworks enabled Hennix to construct a radical critical project—one that synthesises poetic, mathematical, musical and artistic modes of knowledge to challenge Western epistemological boundaries and medial conventions.

The curatorial team of Anja Casser, Lawrence Kumpf and Moritz Nebenführ has organised this presentation in partnership with Malmö Konsthall, The Etymon Foundation in New York, Empty Gallery in Hong Kong, and with Marcus Pal serving as artistic advisor.

Running from July through November 2026, the exhibition offers audiences an opportunity to engage with an artist whose visionary approach anticipated many current discussions around interdisciplinary practice and expanded notions of perception.