Image: Dominik Zietlow, Holz, aus dem die Menschen sind, 2026, film still (detail). Courtesy of the artist
Dominik Zietlow, born in 1988, has received the Manor Kunstpreis, described as one of Switzerland’s most important support prizes for visual art.
The exhibition will take place at Kunstmuseum Luzern from 24 October 2026 through 31 January 2027, with its opening scheduled for 23 October 2026 from 18:00. Eveline Suter is the exhibition’s curator.
Listening and attentive perception are central motifs in Zietlow’s work, whose films examine the interaction between visual and acoustic phenomena. The work asks how sound looks, what happens when sound disappears, and what stories arise when only a fragment reaches the ear. Zietlow combines performative and documentary approaches to question and shift the boundary between the real and fictional worlds.
In his films, people speak in public spaces to an invisible interlocutor, while their conversations gradually form a portrait of a place. For the Manor Kunstpreis, Zietlow addresses his home city of Lucerne, using Fasnacht as a framework for considering hearing, not hearing, exclusion and the individual within the crowd. The exhibition title refers to an old proverb that contrasts mountains’ inability to change position with people’s ability to approach one another, including metaphorically.
The accompanying programme includes a concert by sound designers Mara Miccichè and Marco Mercuzio Peron, followed by a conversation with Zietlow and Suter in the exhibition. The exhibition announcement also identifies a 2026 film work titled ‘Holz, aus dem die Menschen sind’.
The exhibition is accompanied by a trilingual publication in English, German and French, edited by the Kunstmuseum Luzern and published by Vexer Verlag, with texts by Margot Nguyen, Giuseppe Di Salvatore and Eveline Suter. The concert by Miccichè and Peron, devoted to the sound behind the films, takes place on November 11, 2026.
