What, how and for whom of WHW
Meet Sabina Sabolović, What, How & for Whom/WHW, artistic directors of Skulptur Projekte Münster 2027.
Photo: Damir Žižić.
Julius Koller, Why? (Anti-Picture), 1969, installed at the Croatian Association of Artists Building as part of “My Sweet Little Lamb (Everything we see could also be otherwise)” curated by WHW and Kathrin Rhomberg, 2016.
In her talk, member of What, How & for Whom/WHW collective Sabina Sabolović will discuss how the specific perspective of working in her hometown of Zagreb continues to influence her collective curatorial practice. Like many other European countries, Croatia faces the devastating side effects of radical right-wing populism and historical revisionism. At the same time, it has a particular history of liberation, socialism, multi-ethnic federation and national independence in a corrupt free-market capitalism that shapes its present.
How can we reínvent exhibitions as interventionist forms in ideological, social and material circumstances in conditions of economic and political adversity? Her presentation will touch on several projects from different periods that cover the WHW’s work from the very beginning of their practice to today.
Sabina Sabolović, WHW, artistic directors of Skulptur Projekte Münster 2027. IASPIS expert visit in Kiruna and Stockholm 6 March–15 March 2025.
Photo: Hanna Neander
What, How & for Whom/WHW
What, How & for Whom/WHW is a curatorial collective formed in 1999 and is based in Zagreb and Berlin. Its members are Ivet Ćurlin, Ana Dević, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović. The WHW collective established an international study programme for emerging artists called WHW Akademija in 2018 based in Zagreb and will begin collaborating with a new exhibition space in the city later this year. From 2003 to 2023 WHW curated the programme of Gallery Nova, a city-owned gallery in Zagreb.
In 2019–2024, part of the collective (Ivet Ćurlin, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović) were artistic directors of Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna, and in 2024 they were announced as artistic directors of Skulptur Projekte Münster 2027.
Over the years, WHW has organised production, exhibition, education and publishing projects in various geographical and cultural contexts and on different institutional scales. Their curatorial work is inspired by queer-feminist, anti-fascist and decolonialising ideas with the intention of giving new impulses to aesthetic and ideological debates in the field of contemporary art.