DUST

Dust is our constant companion. Wearing gloves and using dust cloths, we try to fight against it – yet it is as rich and multifaceted as life itself. The City Gallery Brixen now dedicates an exhibition to this nuisance, opening on Thursday, 4 June 2026 at 7 pm. The exhibition brings together contemporary artistic positions in which dust becomes visible in its almost infinite transformative capacity: as a material that transcends boundaries, preserves traces, and gives rise to something new.

Dust is created always and everywhere. Whether through construction, ploughing, or driving a car, as well as in nature: volcanoes, deserts, plants, and oceans continuously produce tiny particles. It is often unwanted, posing hygienic, health-related, and not least aesthetic problems. Yet dust is also a fundamental substance: it makes the sky blue and enables the formation of clouds. Every raindrop contains a tiny particle. Dust tells stories of everyday life as well as of the origin of the universe.

In the exhibition, photographs by South Tyrolean artist Jasmine Deporta explore the phenomenon of light, which only becomes visible through its diffusion by tiny particles. Here, dust does not appear directly, but is experienced atmospherically. In Lois Weinberger’s “Mobile Garden,” plants grow from seemingly lifeless soil. The work points to the potential of germination and transformation – and to dust as the origin of new life. Dust has also long been part of artistic practice: as a pigment, it forms the basis of colour and painting. Jörg Hofer gives his works a distinctive structure using marble dust created during the extraction of Laas marble. In the works of Alice Ahad, household dust becomes a carrier of time and memory. As a “collective of fragments,” it gathers and preserves traces, becoming an active fabric of history, identity, and transformation.

The exhibition also explores the religious dimension of dust and presents objects from the collection of the Hofburg Brixen.