With works by SULTAN ÇOBAN, SAMUEL HAITZ, SEDA MIMAROĞLU & RALUCA POPA and FEDERICO PROTTO

As we move from place to place, crossing language barriers and nation states, our motions are inscribed in the objects, stories, accents and friends that we gather along the way—as well as those that we leave behind. The group exhibition EN/COUNTERS brings together artistic works that trace such transcultural connections and confrontations and interweave personal experiences with collective ones.

The exhibition is marked by this polyphony, its echoes reverberating across continents and generations. Soft music drifts from a half-open wall cabinet, inside which everyday objects have been casually left behind, evoking a ghostly presence. Delicate drawings on found papers correspond with poetic text fragments in ever-shifting juxtapositions. Like a palimpsest, fine traces of glue adorn a scanned book page and seem to lend a sticky substance to the longing described therein. These are inconspicuous items that tell stories of farewell and arrival and convey a feeling of home – like a handful of stones that forge a connection across the Atlantic. In this way, the five international artists explore multi-layered forms of belonging.

EN/COUNTERS is curated by LISA DEML and MARIE-SOPHIE DORSCH.


The exhibition is funded by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia and the Karin und Uwe Hollweg Stiftung. The annual programme at Halle für Kunst Lüneburg e.V. is supported by the Ministry for Science and Culture of Lower Saxony, Lüneburgischer Landschaftsverband, and Hansestadt Lüneburg.

SULTAN ÇOBAN lives and works between Basel, Zurich and Rome. Through her performative and installation-based practice, she explores how cultural identity is constructed and staged. Her works have been shown at Eye Filmmuseum (Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2025), Schauspielhaus Zurich (Switzerland, 2024), Les Urbaines (Lausanne, Switzerland, 2024), and Gessnerallee (Zurich, Switzerland, 2024), among others. In 2023, she received the Kiefer Hablitzel Göhner Prize at the Swiss Art Awards in Basel.

SAMUEL HAITZ lives and works in Zurich. His work considers the legacies and concepts of artistic practice as well as desire and its various projections. He often draws on existing materials to question the relevance of authorship and originality. He studied at the Berlin University of the Arts and the Zurich University of the Arts and exhibited at GROTTO (Berlin, Germany, 2024), Triangolo (Cremona, Italy, 2024), Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich, Switzerland, 2021), and Plymouth Rock (Zurich, Switzerland, 2019), among others.

SEDA MIMAROĞLU lives and works in Berlin. Drawing on her studies in law, comparative literature, art history and philosophy, she interweaves literature, poetry, music and imagery in her artistic practice. Mimaroğlu has participated in numerous exhibitions in various constellations and collaborations, including at stations (Berlin, Germany, 2023), Kunstraum Kreuzberg (Berlin, Germany, 2023), and daadgalerie (Berlin, Germany, 2022). She has also published the poetry collection Loose Leaves as an audio cassette (Wanda, 2019) and the book Love Songs (Blue Figure Press, 2021).

RALUCA POPA lives and works in Berlin. The starting point for her artistic practice are often personal records that bear traces of their creation, use and preservation. In combination with other objects, Popa reveals their hidden documentary potential and acknowledges it through careful interventions of reconstruction. Her works have been presented at the 17th Jogja Biennale (Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 2023), the 8th Sinopale (Sinop, Turkey, 2022), Tranzit (Bucharest, Romania, 2020) and MG+MSUM (Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2020), among others.

FEDERICO PROTTO lives and works in Brussels. His work encompasses choreography, music, text, textiles and installation, through which he explores transcultural and transgenerational narratives of migration and potential forms of cross-continental kinship. His projects have been presented at Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers (Paris, France, 2025), DeSingel (Antwerp, Belgium, 2024), Centro Cultural de España (Montevideo, Uruguay, 2023) and Volksroom (Brussels, Belgium, 2021), among others.