Behind the Pavillion | Hubert Hasler
Curator: Denise Parizek
Opening: 1st October, Thursday, 18:30
Location: META Spațiu, B-dul Mihai Viteazu nr. 1, Timișoara
Free entrance
Behind the Pavillion brings together works from different stages of Hubert Hasler’s artistic practice, alongside his most recent projects, “Eurydike, where is the Snake?” and “I wanna be Tree”, created in 2026 during a residency in Sinemorets, Bulgaria. For the exhibition at META Spațiu, the artist has also created a new sculptural work that explores Romanian customs and pays homage to Timișoara.
Drawing on the philosophy of ecology and the interdependence between organisms, the environment, and human activity, Hubert Hasler explores nature through the transformations and tensions that shape it: climate change, exploitation, species extinction, mobility, and adaptation. In his practice, nature also becomes a space for social critique, through which the artist addresses ideas of belonging, migration, xenophobia, and the boundaries we construct between what is considered “native” and “foreign”.
The exhibition takes its title from the photographic series “Behind the Pavilion”, created in the Giardini in Venice. At the front of the pavilions, national identity is celebrated; behind them, neophytes grow — plants that are not native to those territories. Two seemingly divergent realities thus coexist within the same space: the delineation of identities and the continuous movement of species beyond human-made borders.
The same concern runs through the “#overrun” series, in which Hasler follows non-native plants in contexts such as Korea, Malta, and the Maldives, as well as “I wanna be Tree”, where what is usually fixed becomes mobile: inspired by the Bulgarian Kukeri tradition, the artist creates a tree costume made from non-native plants and moves through natural and urbanised landscapes wearing it.
Across photography, video, installation, and sculpture, Behind the Pavillion proposes a journey through time and space, tracing the ways in which nature, economy, habits, and human activity intersect in a world in constant transformation.
This exhibition is supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum.
