What to See Across Europe This August

Sidsel Meineche Hansen​​​​​​​ | Ordet, Milan, Italy | 25 June – 28 September 

Over the past decade, London-based Danish artist Sidsel Meineche Hansen has frequently used artworks to represent larger, often invisible, economic processes and systems. ‘Metal Works’, their current solo show at Ordet in Milan, takes a formalist approach, including a rich assortment of stand-alone pieces – as well as elements extracted from larger, multimedia installations – connected by the titular material. Decontextualized, these works appear silent; but, by paying close attention to their shiny surfaces and colourful oxidation, we become aware that Hansen is, once again, using materials as a starting point for a broader reflection on the opaque nature of capitalist – and artistic – production. – Simone Molinari 

Hannah Höch | Belvedere, Vienna, Austria | 21 June – 6 October

As a key figure of the 1920s avant-garde, German dadaist Hannah Höch was one of the first artists to engage with the power of images in the media. Her job with a major German publisher gave her access to piles of magazines, which she cut up and pieced together to make photomontages. While these works have been widely shown since Höch’s death in 1978, the intelligence of ‘Assembled Worlds’, currently on view at Vienna’s Belvedere, lies in making connections between Höch’s collages and her passion for avant-garde film of the era, with its comparable techniques of cutting, composition and montage. – Louisa Elderton

Lee Scratch Perry | Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, Switzerland | 12 April – 29 September 

Beyond his experiments in sound, Perry, who lived in Switzerland for the last three decades of his life, was also a visual artist, and his work has been included in several group exhibitions since his death in 2021. Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire is the latest institution to honour Perry’s idiosyncratic vision in what is his first institutional presentation in Europe. It brings together an array of Perry’s works made from everyday objects such as jewellery, mirrors and rocks, with collages featuring neon-bright spray paint and pages from books and newspapers in a setting historically charged with a different type of unfettered creativity, that of Dada artists who founded and performed in the original Cabaret Voltaire in 1916. – Krzysztof Kościuczuk

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley​​​​​​​ | Halle am Berghain, Berlin, Germany | 12 July – 13 October 

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s new game-based exhibition, ‘THE SOUL STATION’ – commissioned by LAS Art Foundation for Halle am Berghain, Berlin – builds an interactive metaverse in which collective decisions can offer a path to greater social awareness. Featuring a newly commissioned work, YOU CAN’T HIDE ANYTHING (2024), alongside a survey of projects from the past five years, the artist’s first solo presentation in Germany invites viewers to play a collection of narrative-driven games. Through composite characters and immersive environments generated in a low-poly aesthetic, Brathwaite-Shirley explores marginalized histories – specifically those of Black and Queer communities. Entering Berlin’s legendary nightclub, visitors find themselves in a dark space, dense with fog, in which an array of variously sized screens flicker with artificial light, idly awaiting human interaction. – Brooke Wilson 

‘Giantesses’ | BWA Wroclaw, Wrocław, Poland | 10 May – 8 September 

With German, Polish and Czech influences, the historic geographical region of Lower Silesia, has long been a cultural melting pot. Featuring five female artists with a deep connection to the area, ‘Giantesses’, curated by Tomek Pawłowski-Jarmołajew and Agnieszka Rayzacher at BWA Wroclaw, has been conceived as a journey through Lower Silesia’s unique landscape. The exhibition, whose title plays on the name of the local Giant Mountain range, opens with a map showing where the five artists – Bozenna Biskupska, Urszula Broll, Ewa Ciepielewska, Katarzyna Rotkiewicz-Szumska and Ewa Zarzycka – have developed their practices, from a Buddhist ashram in Przesieka to a community-led theatre in Michałowice. – Agata Pyzik 

^{Main image: Lee Scratch Perry, Untitled (detail), 2020, installation view. Courtesy: The Visual Estate of Lee Scratch Perry; photograph: Cedric Mussano}