02-18.2026 

The exhibition A Shroud Woven of Solar Threads begins from a fundamental absence. Much of the ancient Mithra culture we seek to approach cannot be fully known. A ritual ceremony, a bell, an incense seed, a surviving image, a linguistic root, a climatic event, or a scientific model of the Sun become points of departure, weaving a portal into a time to which we have no direct access.

Different temporalities fold into one another. The Mithraic past, which is irretrievable, and a speculative future, which is unknowable, meet in the present moment—the only temporal state in which we are actually able to construct meaning.

At the center of this temporal constellation stands the Sun. In ancient Iranian cosmologies like the Mithraic culture, the Sun was simultaneously a source of life, power, illumination, and danger. It was something to worship, invoke, and ultimately attempt to influence. Ritual offered a means of negotiating with forces that exceeded human agency: through chants, offerings, and ceremonial acts, cosmic order could supposedly be maintained. Abrupt climatic shifts on the Iranian plateau, including periods of increasing aridity and drought, provide a speculative context for the intensification of such ritual practices.

Embedded within the ritual is a darker proposition–the desire to control nature by establishing an intermediary power capable of acting on humanity’s behalf. This desire has not disappeared. It has just changed language: the priestess invoking Mithra to bring order to the Sun is echoed in contemporary technologies like solar geoengineering. Both produce systems of knowledge through which power is invoked, organised, and directed. This invocation of a higher power can be understood not simply as an expression of faith, but as a psychological and political response to crisis: if nature is not merely happening, but can be addressed, mediated, or appeased, then uncertainty becomes something that can be acted upon.

This dynamic resonates with the present. We inhabit a period of planetary overheating in which technological systems promise increasingly sophisticated forms of environmental management. We turn toward new technological authorities, new forms of expertise, and new “gods” of computation and optimisation.

A Shroud Woven of Solar Threads inhabits an unstable interval, where ritual transcends into technology, scripture becomes script, the temple dissolves into a simulation, and yet the Sun remains–across thousands of years–both an object of devotion and a force we seek to command.

Location
Halle am Berghain
Am Wriezener Bahnhof, 10243 Berlin

Public Opening
 2 October: 5 – 8 pm

Regular Opening Hours
2 – 18 OCTOBER: Thursday – Sunday, 2 - 7 pm and on request

Tickets
10 € / reduced 8 €
Card payment only

The second exhibition of HOUSE at Halle am Berghain is created in partnership with the Autotelic Foundation.
The exhibition is financially supported by the Canada Council of Arts, the Autotelic Foundation, and the private donor Christopher Seagon.