Lausitz Festival: Blickfänge – Room for art Raum für Kunst

Exhibition duration: May 21 to June 26, 2026

Opening hours: Mon to Fri from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Lusatia, shaped by cultural diversity, several languages and structural changes. Art in this region is becoming a connecting element between history, present and future. The traveling exhibition "Blickfänge - Space for Art" continues at this point. It brings artistic impulses beyond the borders of Lusatia and international exchange thus becomes a living part of the festival.

Since the first year of the Lusatian Festival, photographers have been capturing moments from the performances and glimpses into the festival events with their cameras. In the process, something like a visual memory of the festival is created and at the same time the interplay between people on stage and in front of it is made visible.

The photo exhibition has already been on display in Lusatia in Finsterwalde, Görlitz, Zittau and Cottbus/Chotěbuz. A new concept is created for each location: the selection, presentation and spatial arrangement are adapted to the specific conditions, thus opening up new perspectives.

In Prague, the production Empusion deserves special attention, illustrating the dynamics of cultural exchange between Lusatia and Central Europe. The theater production of the Lusatia Festival 2024 – inspired by the novel of the same name by Olga Tokarczuk – was presented last year at the Prague German-language Theater Festival at the DOX Center for Contemporary Art.

Through the photographs of seven artists, the audience is immersed in the atmosphere of the Lusatia Festival. Theatrical photography here functions not only as documentation, but also as a distinctive artistic language that conveys the atmosphere of place and time beyond the region. A new context is created in the space of the Na Zábradlí Theater – a dialogue between image, architecture and audience.

The opening on May 20 at 5:00 p.m. will offer more than just a ceremonial opening. The program will include a discussion between artistic directors Petr Štědroně (Na Zábradlí Theatre) and Daniel Kühnel (Lusatian Festival), who will reflect on the importance of festivals as meeting places in the European context. Together with the audience, they will ask themselves the central question that runs through the entire exhibition: What kind of space does art need?

The exhibition is a joint event of the Lusatian Festival and Na Zábradlí Theatre in cooperation with the Contact Office of the Free State of Saxony in Prague and is financially supported by the Czech-German Future Fund.