“Many of his contemporaries considered these ideas utopian, but today they feel more urgent than ever,” Riedl said of the artist, who lived from 1928 to 2000. The museum building itself grew out of Hundertwasser’s ecological philosophy. Warped floors mimic the undulating earth. Wonky windows and mosaics seem to swim up walls like microorganisms. What Hundertwasser called plant “tenants” dwell amid the artworks, reside on the roof and poke out of windows.
For the 2026 Biennale, KunstHausWien has opened two exhibitions. “Seeds. Reclaiming Roots, Sowing Futures” (through Feb. 14, 2027) invites 14 artists to explore connections between colonialism, migration, Indigenous knowledge and biodiversity. In the other exhibition, “I Wish We Had More Time” (through Aug. 9), 34 contributors with the Institute of Queer Ecology present nearly 50 works that make biodiversity loss more relatable by linking it to personal losses.
“For me, and I think for most of us, the place of heartbreak in a relationship and the heartbreak I feel thinking about species extinction are right next to each other in the heart,” said Nicolas Baird, the group’s co-director, in a video interview.
As part of the exhibition, Haiwen Yu contributed a sculpture of people embracing and crying as fish swim up their tears. Yu, who uses the pronouns they/him, was reflecting on the closure of a gay bar where they had met a former partner. They were reminded of salmon losing their spawning habitat after a river is dammed.
When Yu fired the ceramic sculpture, the base cracked. So the only thing holding the piece together is the hug. The exhibition’s centerpiece sculpture, “Orrery of Interconnected Loss,” is inspired by timekeeping models of the solar system. It is constructed from tree branches and 34 natural objects — including a fossilized fern and a butterfly wing — that represent each of the show’s contributors.
The contributing artists and scientists were given freedom to collaborate and work outside their disciplines. The field of queer ecology questions categories and binaries, and promotes addressing environmental crises through kinship across different species. As Lee Pivnik, the co-director of the organization, said, “Queer ecology provides a framework for friendship as a way of life.”
