Cycle of Warmth

  • 2026
    Installation, film, performative reading.
    Commissioned by City Curator Hamburg

  • Fire – From the Cosmos to the Commons, City Curator Hamburg, installation view, Memorial St. Nikolai, 2026.
    Installation views photographed by Daria Kulnina.

  • We live in a time of overheating – of debates, cities, servers, and bodies alike. Temperatures are rising, so is fear, confusion, a number of climate migrants and deepening inequalities in access to resources. Cities are often described in thermal terms: hot asphalt, burning infrastructures, urban heat islands. Lene Markusen proposes to look at the city as a body struggling to regulate its temperature, through the life and work of a late Hamburg artist Barbara Haeger, as well as her own experience as an artist undergoing menopause.  

    One of Haeger’s key works, Weiblicher Engel (Female Angel), 1960/1972 – a burnt, fragile figure – is located at the St. Nikolai Memorial. The sculpture is shaped by Haeger’s memory of witnessing the burning of Berlin, and the lasting impact of fire on both body and psyche. Markusen brings together further female city sculptures by Haeger from across Hamburg, assembling them into a network of interdependency and relation. Themes that appear distant become deeply entangled: climate change, global warming, the social taboo surrounding menopause, and the inner, psychic experiences of intensity and visibility with the digital overload of the data and the servers. 

    Through a language of honesty, feminism, and intergenerational responsibility, the work opens up the possibility of imagining – and inhabiting – another cycle of warmth: one that gestures toward less overheated cities, and more balanced, equitable societies. 

    Joanna Warsza

  • Review FIRE: From the Cosmos to the Commons” by Jesi Khadivi,
    e-flux, 8 September 2026

  • Watch the film here

  • The city is in menopause.

  • Give me back the water!

  • Barbara Haeger: Die Sitzende, The Seated Woman, 1954, Dulsberg.
    Thirst, exhaustion, disconnectedness. Change the city. Become our new home: a center of connectedness, rooms and spaces of joy, of wellbeing, of kindness. You will be our patroness.  

  • Interview Europe's Hottest Summer Has Hamburg Artist, Lene Markusen, Asking: Does The City Have Menopause?
    prazzlearts.com 4 July 2026

  • Barbara Haeger: Zwei Sphinxe, Two Sphinxes, 1960, Billstedt.
    Insomnia and fear. Awake at 3 am. Sleepless due to heat in the rooms. Sleepless due to lack of oestrogen. I am worried about tomorrow. I am worried about the wars. I am worried about my job. I am worried about all these illnesses people get these days. In the city at 3 am. I fear steps, gazes, bodies too close. Take away my fear. Bring me back the nights!

  • Barbara Haeger: Ohne Titel, Untitled, 1962-63, University Library of chemistry, Rotherbaum. Emotional instability and water deposits. Chemical emotions, emotional chemistry. Extreme weather: despair, sadness, rage, pain. The city will be flooded. Open your reserved surfaces to all my liquids, Hamburg!

  • Barbara Haeger: Große Liegende, Large Reclining Woman, 1967, Psychiatric clinic of the university hospital Eppendorf. Domesticated fire – rising temperatures: hot flashes, pathologization, psychiatrization, depoliticization. We are overheated: You and your sisters have become heat accumulators; fireplaces spread across the city. We cool down.

  • Let the heat of climate change and menopause become warmth between us!

  • Barbara Haeger: Weiblicher Engel, Female Angel, 1960, Memorial St. Nikolai, Hamburg-Mitte.

  • Give me back my joy of life!

  • I don’t know if this sculpture has a title, 62 is written. Destruction of the form, Zerstörung der Form.

  • On Menopause, Performative Reading by Lene Markusen as part of the exhibition Fire – From the Cosmos to the Commons by City Curator Hamburg/International Summer Festival Kampnagel 2026 at Memorial St. Nikolai, August 8th.
    Photography: Natalya Stupka

  • Film created in collaboration
    Performed by: Lucrezia Palandri
    Director of Photography: Giulia Lenzi
    Soundtrack: Martina Raponi / noiserr
    Drawings and Costumes: Lene Markusen
    Color Grading: Susi Montgomery
    Written, narrated and directed by Lene Markusen

    With the financial support of Behörde für Kultur und Medien Hamburg and Kgl. Dänische Botschaft Berlin

    Commissioned by City Curator Hamburg