Contemporary Art from Austria and Germany | Biennale de Lyon

As part of the Lyon Contemporary Art Biennale 2026, Austria-based artists Birke Gorm and James Lewis, alongside another German artist, will gather for a side event during the Biennale. The discussion will focus on their works for the Lyon Biennale, their respective artistic positions and working methods, as well as current developments and debates in the field of visual arts in Germany and Austria. The event will take place in English and invites an exchange on contemporary perspectives, networks, and challenges.

A collaboration between the Austrian Cultural Forum Paris and the Goethe-Institut Lyon, in resonance with the Lyon Biennale.

Birke Gorm

Born in 1986 in Hamburg, Germany. Raised in Denmark, lives and works in Vienna, Austria.

Working with residual and salvaged materials—scrap metal, cardboard, broken ceramics, or burlap sacks—Birke Gorm develops sculptural forms oscillating between fragility and monumentality. Through processes of collecting, dismantling, and reconfiguring, her work blurs the distinctions between waste and resource, ruin and value. By attending to the trajectories of objects, the artist adopts a critical stance toward systems of production and consumption, while exploring repair and transformation as political gestures.

James Lewis

Born in 1986 in London, United Kingdom. Lives and works in Vienna, Austria.

Through sculpture, installation, and sound, James Lewis analyzes how systems of measurement shape perception and experience. His work responds to the logics of quantification that reduce complex realities to data, questioning the frameworks through which relationships between humans, animals, and objects are defined. Through spatial interventions and constructed environments, he introduces conditions of instability where order gives way to uncertainty. Attentive to processes of accumulation and stratification, the artist examines how structures of control are imposed and eroded, opening up alternative modes of relating to the world.

The event will be followed by a reception. The discussion will take place in English only (without translation).