Tai Kwun Contemporary presents Anne Imhof: House of Swans (25 Sep 2026 to 3 Jan 2027), on view across three floors of the JC Contemporary and F Hall galleries. Curated by Ying Kwok and Tiffany Leung, House of Swans marks the Asian solo exhibition debut of the 2017 Venice Biennale Golden Lion recipient Anne Imhof. Presenting a substantial body of new work conceived specifically for Tai Kwun, the exhibition juxtaposes her multidisciplinary artworks with sculptural elements and a soundscape of original music. Within this striking scenography, visitors explore an environment filled with suspense yet poised for action.
The exhibition foregrounds the artist’s deepening connection to classical ballet, revisiting and expanding upon her previous performance work, DOOM: House of Hope (2025). With a newly produced soundtrack incorporating classical and electronic music, House of Swans takes audiences through imposing and intimate architectural spaces to create a powerful choreography. During the exhibition’s run, performances by dancers from Hong Kong Ballet provide a window into the unfolding narrative of House of Swans, showcasing Imhof’s ongoing inquiry into bodily expression and individual transformation.
Imhof’s practice defies a single narrative; instead, it pairs contrasting elements, creating conditions for events to unfold. In House of Swans, she presents a stage for performances through large-scale installations and videos that stand alongside more traditional artistic media such as drawings, paintings and bronze reliefs. The exhibition guides visitors through artworks in suspended states between figuration and abstraction, contingency and control, and permanence and impermanence. The performances inspired by classical ballet offer one interpretation of the exhibition’s scenography.
Exhibition Highlights
Serving as an overview of the exhibition’s themes, the F Hall Gallery brings together works across painting, bronze sculpture, installation and video, highlighting Imhof’s central interest in the body in motion. The body in motion appears in performance footage from the large-scale performance installation DOOM: House of Hope (2025), held at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. Elsewhere, Imhof registers the body’s absence in a new series of paintings that she defaces by scratching into their surfaces, capturing the trajectories of her unseen physical movements.
The adjoining JC Contemporary galleries on the 1/F explore “in-between” states. Amplifying the sense of movement on a grand scale, an imposing jumbotron that has crashed to the floor displays a countdown to the exhibition’s conclusion in concert with footage from DOOM. Through the intersection of these different timelines, the work holds viewers between waiting and recollection, presence and absence, immediacy and distance. This tension extends into two large-scale cloud paintings on the walls at each end of the gallery, which evoke a state of suspension – the moment before a storm arrives, heavy with accumulating energy.
In a transitional space, Imhof juxtaposes metal lockers with a bronze relief depicting two figures embracing, alongside several figurative drawings. Upstairs, a large glass container houses salvaged archival film reels from Hong Kong’s Clear Water Bay Film Studio, once associated with the height of Hong Kong cinema. These canisters of captured performances now exist in a state of abandonment. Echoing the accompanying video work, Citizen (2025), the installation stages a play of tension between history and fiction, spectacle and ruin, stillness and latent energy.
Two interconnected spaces on the 3/F recall both a basketball court and a dance rehearsal room, transforming the gallery into a stage where performers and viewers alike are suspended between the exercise of freedom and the constraints of discipline. A speaker array moves along a track, playing original music that activates the space and shifts its atmosphere. In the smaller gallery, behind crowd barriers with reflective surfaces, paintings on the wall draw on the “Mad Scene” from the classical ballet Giselle, choreographed by Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot, and premiered in Paris in 1841. In the scene, the revelation of betrayal precipitates a rupture with reality, opening onto both breakdown and transformation.
Selected Performances
On selected weekends throughout the exhibition, dancers move into the 3/F galleries at scheduled times to present the central refrain from a new ballet conceived by Imhof. The ballet follows a young heroine who seeks to reclaim her power, agency and voice as a woman – both within society and on stage – as she navigates love, personal conviction and duty to her family.
The performance was developed with Devon Teuscher, Michael Dé La Nuez, Remy Young, Toon Lobach, Daniil Simkin and Eliza Douglas, alongside Qingxin Wang, Ryo Kato, Gouta Seki and the corps de ballet of Hong Kong Ballet. The ballet’s original score was commissioned from composer Jacob Madden and developed in close collaboration with Imhof. Madden performs the score live, alongside prerecorded musical contributions by Ville Haimala, Luke Hülsmann and Levi Strasser.
Strasser also performs a live concert embedded within the ballet. The music incorporates electronic soundscapes, voices, piano, drums and guitar, extending beyond the performances to become a soundtrack for the exhibition itself.
At the opening week performances (25 – 26 Sep), international dancers and musicians, including Devon Teuscher and fellow performers from American Ballet Theatre in New York, as well as Daniil Simkin, will join Hong Kong Ballet dancers in special performances. Throughout the exhibition’s run, adapted performances by Hong Kong Ballet will take place in the gallery on selected weekends in Oct and Nov.
Exhibition co-curator Tiffany Leung said: “House of Swans marks a significant new step in Anne Imhof’s practice, where the performance and the exhibition are conceived together in the same space and time. With her deepening connection to ballet, she expands a distinct language of movement and storytelling that centres on female agency.”
Deputy Director and Head of Art Philip Tinari said: “Tai Kwun Contemporary is honoured to present Anne Imhof’s first exhibition in Asia. For more than a decade, Imhof’s art has challenged audiences to look and think in new ways, destabilising the boundary between spectator and participant. House of Swans offers viewers a chance to enter into her world, following a heroine’s journey with mind and body. We are excited to be sharing it with the Hong Kong public.”
Performance Schedule
Opening Week Performances (Hong Kong Ballet and international cast):
25 & 26 Sep 3pm (approx. 70 mins)
Adapted Performances by Hong Kong Ballet:
3, 4, 10, 11, 24, 25, 31 Oct 2026
1, 7, 8, 14, 15, 21, 22, 28, 29 Nov 2026
2:30pm – 3:15pm
3:45pm – 4:30pm
Ticketing
Tickets are now available online on art-mate.
HK$50 (Regular Tickets)
HK$40 (Concession Tickets for full-time students, seniors aged 60 or above, and persons with disabilities)
Multi-Entry Pass HK$90 | Four visits and exclusive dining offers
Free entry for children aged 4 or below
Further ticketing information is available on the Tai Kwun website.
Tai Kwun Conversations | Anne Imhof × Devon Teuscher – The Magic of Collaboration
26 Sep, 5pm – 6:30pm
JC Cube
Internationally acclaimed artist Anne Imhof and Devon Teuscher, a Principal Dancer with American Ballet Theatre, will explore the spirit and practice of cross-disciplinary collaboration.
The conversation will be introduced by Tiffany Leung, Assistant Curator at Tai Kwun and co-curator of the exhibition Anne Imhof: House of Swans. Co-curator Ying Kwok will take audiences behind the scenes of House of Swans, exploring its development with Imhof and Teuscher. Imhof will discuss how she synthesises the unique languages of different artistic genres, while Teuscher will reflect on how contemporary ideas are translated into the physical vocabulary of classical ballet.
Further information is available on the Tai Kwun website.
Learning and Engagement Programmes
Over the course of the exhibition, Tai Kwun Contemporary will present a series of learning and engagement programmes such as Teachers’ Morning and Teachers’ Workshop. Held on weekends, Guided Tours: Who’s Next? offer thought-provoking perspectives on the exhibition from art professionals and guest contributors. The Tai Kwun Family Day programmes offer tours and activities for participants aged five and above, while Kids Day is scheduled in Dec. On 2/F, the Hi! & Seek corner offers a space for dialogue and exploration about the exhibition’s themes.
Further information on tours and public programmes is available on the Tai Kwun website.
About Anne Imhof:
Anne Imhof (born in 1978 in Giessen, Germany) has emerged over the past decade as one of the most acclaimed artists of her generation. Today based between Berlin and New York, Imhof spent her formative years in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where she taught herself to draw and make music while working as a bouncer at a local nightclub before eventually enrolling at the city’s academy of fine arts, the Städelschule (2008 – 2012). Her practice has since expanded to encompass performance and choreography, painting and drawing, music, installation and sculpture, and most recently, film.
Anne Imhof’s projects have been widely presented internationally. Her performance project Angst was staged at the Kunsthalle Basel and Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin in 2016. At the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, she won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation for her installation FAUST in the German Pavilion. Since then her projects have been presented at leading institutions in Europe and worldwide, including Tate Modern in London (2019), the Art Institute of Chicago (2019), Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2021), the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam(2022), Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria (2024) and the Serralves Museum in Porto (2025). Her works are in the collections of major museums including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Sammlung der Nationalgalerie, Berlin and Tate, London. She was previously featured in the group exhibition Performing Society: The Violence of Gender held in 2019 at Tai Kwun.
Anne Imhof: House of Swans
Artist: Anne Imhof
Curators: Ying Kwok, Tiffany Leung
Exhibition Architecture: COLLECTIVE Studio
Engineering Design: Arup
Performance Partner: Hong Kong Ballet
25 Sep 2026 – 3 Jan 2027
11am – 7pm, Tue – Sun
JC Contemporary, Tai Kwun
