Susan Hiller: 'Bad Dreams' Opens at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin

Lisson is pleased to announce that Susan Hiller’s work is the subject of Bad Dreams, a major exhibition opening at KW Institute for Contemporary Art on 17 October. The first survey of Hiller’s work in Berlin, the show brings together five decades of the artist’s multimedia practice, exploring dreams, trance, hallucinations, spirituality, faith and encounters with the otherworldly.

The exhibition brings together ambitious audiovisual works including Belshazzar’s Feast (1983–84), Dream Screens (1996), Wild Talents (1997), Channels (2013) and Resounding (2013), alongside rarely seen Home Truths paintings from the 1980s, large-scale photographs from the Levitations series (2011) and sculptural works including Homage to Joseph Beuys and Outlaw Cowgirl. Drawing on Hiller’s longstanding interest in experiences that resist easy explanation, these works examine how images, stories and cultural beliefs shape perceptions of the world, and how ordinary objects can become charged with meaning through association and context.

The exhibition also highlights Hiller’s pioneering engagement with the internet as an artistic medium, which she approached as a repository of collective desires, beliefs and secrets. A groundbreaking figure in conceptual and multimedia art, Hiller’s practice continually questioned the boundaries between the familiar and the unexplained, tracing how fantasy, fear and belief impact understanding of the surrounding world.

On view: 17 October 2026 – 10 January 2027

KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany

Learn more here

Image: Susan Hiller, Belshazzar's Feast (Campfire version) (1983 - 1984). © The Artist, Courtesy Lisson.