Regionale 26 — A Transcultural Journey Through the Heart of Europe’s Borderlands
Marking a bold exploration of identity, transformation, and the interplay between humanity and environment, the Axis Mundi exhibition is set to open on 28 November 2025 at the Stapflehus Gallery in Weil am Rhein, Germany. Staged within the framework of Regionale 26 — a tri‑national contemporary art platform spanning the border regions of Basel (Switzerland), Alsace (France), and Southern Baden (Germany) — the show promises to redefine the myth of the world axis through a contemporary lens.
For over 25 years, Regionale has championed cultural exchange, diversity, and public dialogue through art. The 2025 edition, focusing on transitional states between human and environment, reality and imagination, body and society, brings together some twenty institutions across the three countries. Key venues include:
Kunsthallen Basel;
Haus der Elektronischen Künste (HEK), Basel;
Museum of Contemporary Art in Münchenstein;
E‑WERK and Kunstverein Freiburg;
La Kunsthalle Mulhouse, and others.
Adding a unique dimension to the experience, specially organised bus tours will allow visitors to explore multiple exhibitions in a single day, offering an immersive journey through the region’s vibrant cultural landscape. (More details: https://regionale.org/en/bustours/)
Curated by Basel‑based Victoria Tundis and Pavel Kovalenko, Axis Mundi embraces a transcultural methodology — one that thrives on the interplay, fusion, and mutual influence of diverse cultural traditions. This approach feels especially resonant in a region where three nations converge.
Rather than depicting the world axis as a vertical line connecting heaven, earth, and the underworld, the exhibition presents it as a network of potential reference points. This reinterpretation mirrors the complexity of today’s world, where boundaries between the organic and synthetic, spiritual and material, are increasingly blurred amid global crises.
The exhibition unfolds as a three‑tiered energy topography:
The lower level evokes connections to earth, body, matter, and collective memory;
The middle level becomes a space of ritual and transformation, exploring migration, memory, and identity;
The upper level offers a techno‑spiritual realm, engaging with the future, digital existence, and the boundaries of the body.
Seventeen artists from Germany, Switzerland, and France will contribute paintings, sculptures, audiovisual works, and installations. Among them are: Johann Kralewski, Zelina Baumann, Feroz, Ange‑Frédéric Coffy, Victor Sala, Miguela Tamo, Kaspar Flück, Elia Menang Setiad, Katalena Janitz, Jacob Augustin, Inka ter Haar, Pavel Aguilar, Roma Bantik, Susi Hinz, Franziska Baumgartner, Markus Eberzold, and Natalia Peredvigina.
Their works, selected for their engagement with themes of transformation, identity, migration, spirituality, and human‑environment relations, will form a polyphonic meditation on the mythic world axis.
As part of the accompanying programme, open discussions with artists and curators will be held, including a talk with Susi Hinz about her HydraUnit project. In it, she explores how a hydra, an Apple computer, kaolin, and the human body might form hybrids in a speculative vision of the future.
As the curtains rise on this ambitious transcultural venture, Axis Mundi invites audiences to embark on a thought‑provoking voyage across borders — not just geographical, but conceptual and perceptual. Through its layered narratives and boundary‑defying artworks, the exhibition challenges us to reconsider our place within the intricate web of existence, where past and future, nature and technology, self and other intertwine.
Dates: 28 November 2025 — 11 January 2026 Place: Stapflehus Gallery, Weil am Rhein, Germany, and other exhibition spaces in the Basel (Switzerland), Alsace (France), and Southern Baden (Germany) regions