Manifesta 16 transforms Ruhr churches into art spaces

Since 21 June, Manifesta 16 has been staged in four Ruhr cities—Duisburg, Essen, Bochum and Gelsenkirchen—as part of the biennial’s 30th‑anniversary edition. The exhibition repurposes a dozen post‑war churches that are empty or deconsecrated, turning them into venues for contemporary art, design, concerts, workshops and community programmes. Organisers cite research indicating that around 20,000 German churches could be closed or demolished in the next decade, and use the project to raise the issue of their future on the national agenda.

Artists such as Julian Irlinger, Athina Koumparouli, Mona Hatoum and others are creating site‑specific works in venues like Duisburg’s Kulturkirche Liebfrauen, Essen’s Markuskirche and St. Gertrud. The aim is to explore how former places of worship can become new civic pillars that foster social cohesion, public‑space recovery and neighbourhood interaction in a region still marked by industrial decline and demographic change.