Opening: “Hidden History – Facets of Subculture in Frankfurt Rhine-Main”

17.04.2026, 18:00

We warmly invite you and your friends to the opening of the exhibition Hidden History – Facets of Subculture in Frankfurt Rhine-Main at the Frankfurter Kunstverein.

The Frankfurter Kunstverein has invited the Diamant / Museum for Urban Culture from Offenbach to the Steinerne Haus at the Römerberg to realise the exhibition Hidden History together. The exhibition is dedicated to key figures, artists and activists from the Rhine-Main region who have shaped Frankfurt’s cultural landscape over decades.

The focus is on public space as a site where subculture takes shape. Over the four-week duration of the exhibition, actions, dance performances, hip-hop evenings, artist-led tours and urban storytelling by key protagonists of Frankfurt’s cultural scene will offer new perspectives on the vibrant life of the city.

At 6 pm, Franziska Nori, Director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein, and Heiner Blum, curator of the exhibition, will give opening remarks.

The exhibition opens with a performative prologue: artist and activist Oguz Sen and choreographer and performer Honji Wang have jointly developed a participatory work at the intersection of drawing and performance. La La Land – Aufhören anzufangen is conceived as an open system, sustained by collective participation and continuous transformation.

The performance that activates the space together with students from the Rudolf Koch School in Offenbach and dancers Caterina Politi and Marco Di Nardo can be experienced during the exhibition opening at 7 and 9 pm. Without a fixed choreography, movement emerges from presence, encounter and situation. Performers and participants share the space on equal terms—between action and stillness, decision and openness.

Oguz Sen is an activist working in public space, engaging in social and political discourse. Through his large-scale murals, he addresses political issues and social injustices. His well-known works include a mural at Frankfurt’s Osthafen dedicated to Alan Kurdi, who drowned in the Mediterranean in 2015 while fleeing Syria, as well as a 27-metre-long painting beneath the Friedensbrücke commemorating the victims of the racist attack in Hanau, realised together with the “Kollektiv ohne Namen”.

Honji Wang is a choreographer and performer shaped by hip-hop underground culture. Raised in Frankfurt as the daughter of Korean immigrants, she is a self-taught artist who developed her practice outside institutional frameworks. Her work emerges from lived experience, where movement becomes a form of knowledge—rooted in breakdance, martial arts, and the physical realities of discipline, labor, and resilience. Across her choreographic and performative work, Wang is interested in the body as a site of memory, contradiction, and transformation.

The opening event, including access to the performance, is free of charge and open to the public.

We look forward to welcoming you!