Somewhere between an old photograph from a long-forgotten magazine and a fragment of broken furniture, Lucia Tallová’s world takes shape. This September, her fragile, poetic work hangs right in the heart of Berlin. It happens exactly when the whole international art world is watching the city. The Slovak artist is, after all, Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year 2026. Her exhibition Moving Clouds therefore opens on 9 September at PalaisPopulaire, as part of Berlin Art Week.
A language built from old photographs
Tallová was born in 1985 in Bratislava. She also studied at the art academy there. Her international breakthrough came in 2022, through her participation in the Lyon Biennale. She works with photographs from old books and magazines. She combines them with found objects, such as furniture fragments or natural materials. At the intersection of painting, collage and installation, a distinctive language emerges. It touches on the fragility of memory, suppressed women’s histories, ecology, loss and utopia. None of it, however, is illustrative. It’s more of a quiet, poetic meditation on what remains as the world accelerates.
Why her, why now
She was nominated for the prize by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath. They are the directors of Hamburger Bahnhof and the founders of the curatorial platform Art Reoriented. In other words, they are the people who directly shape how contemporary art is read in Berlin today. Deutsche Bank has, moreover, honored artists with the title Artist of the Year since 2010. It places emphasis specifically on work with paper and photography. These are exactly the media around which Tallová builds her entire body of work.
An exhibition as an open evening
The opening takes the form of an Open House, rather than a conventional, closed launch. Live speakers guide visitors through her constructions, collages and paintings, instead of wall texts. Music and refreshments at Café LePopulaire round out the evening. The exhibition also takes place during Berlin Art Week itself. It becomes, as a result, one of the focal points drawing the attention of the city’s international visitors that week.
Where and when
PalaisPopulaire, Unter den Linden 5, Berlin. The opening takes place on 9 September 2026. The exhibition then continues on an ongoing basis from that date. An Artist Talk with Lucia Tallová follows on 12 September.
