Manifesta 2026 asks what should happen to Germany’s unused churches

Inside the St. Gertrude Church in Essen, Germany, all the church pews are on their sides, standing vertically, like towers on the chancel. The bottoms of the benches are carved with elegant graffiti phrases, like “Keep door open”, “Love is freedom” and “How can I let go and be free?”

This installation, Elevation, was created by Berlin-based artist Nasan Tur, and it is one of about a dozen artworks that fill the former Catholic church. Built in 1877, it was heavily damaged in the Second World War and rebuilt in 1955. In June 2025, it held its last religious service, and since then it has been transformed into a home for artist studios and an exhibition space.

It is one of 12 churches throughout the Ruhr valley of Germany, a historically coal mining and steel manufacturing area, that are the focus of this year’s Manifesta 16 Ruhr, the 30th anniversary edition of the biennial.

The aim this year is to explore how the region’s many disused churches can be revitalised through various different types of cultural and community projects that might benefit one of the most disadvantaged parts of North Rhine-Westphalia.

“When Manifesta comes to a city, we don’t start with an exhibition; we come with a question: What’s happening here?” says Hedwig Fijen, Manifesta’s director. “We always ask what is needed, what do people want, and what is the most urgent socio-political issue? When we arrived in the Ruhr, we found out that it’s one of the most poor, fragile areas.”

In the Ruhr region, Fijen says, “People told us, we need common spaces, places where we can barbecue, or just come together in their free time. These empty churches can be those spaces.”

Like previous editions of the nomadic biennial, Manifesta 16 Ruhr, which opened to the public on Sunday 21 June and runs through 4 October, establishes residency in a chosen city or metropolitan area, bringing curators, urbanists and artists from across the globe to create art installations and cultural programmes aimed at transformation.

It’s unlike previous editions, however, because it encompasses not one but four cities—Duisburg, Essen, Gelsenkirchen and Bochum—while collaborating with dozens of museums and art institutions in the surrounding Ruhr region. As such, it is hard to visit in a single day, and is better visited by car over a two- or three-day trip.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Fijen explains, Germany tried to rebuild the social fabric of its society by building churches in every neighbourhood. Many of them were built in the Brutalist architectural style, by some of the notable architects of the era, such as Alvar Aalto and Gottfried Böhm.

These neighborhood churches were called pantoffelkirchen (slipper churches), referring to the idea that the church should be close enough to home that one could walk there in their slippers. But in the 1980s, when the coal mines and the steel industry shut down in this region, many of the workers who attended church moved away, and others simply stopped attending. Some were deconsecrated, and others simply abandoned.

Today, the region's demographic is no longer just Catholic or Protestant, but is more religiously diverse with Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and other religious minority communities, as well as a large irreligious population.

“We went around and visited about 200 disused churches,” Fijen says. “I thought: Ce n’est pas un pipe, or ‘This is not a church,’ but what can it become?”

International artists and designers that were brought in by Manifesta came up with various solutions. St. Josef’s in Gelsenkirchen was first used as a basketball court, and later transformed by Barcelona-based architect Josep Bohigas; he inflated a giant blue balloon in the nave, and covered the floor with sand to make the interior feel like a beach.

St. Bonifatius, built in 1963, is renamed for the biennial in honour of Ferdane Satır, a migrant labourer who was killed in 1984, along with six members of her family, in a racist attack targeting immigrants from Turkey and Yugoslavia. Gürsoy Doğtaş, a German curator and child of so-called “guest workers,” created a tea garden, with various plants growing in an outdoor nursery, and tea bag production inside the former church.

In the centre of Duisburg, the landmark Kulturkirche Liebfrauen, a 1958 Brutalist masterpiece designed by Toni Hermanns, is already used as a cultural centre. For Manifesta, curators Henry Meyric Hughes and Michael Kurtz have created a sound installation using the pipes from church organs that were destroyed after the Second World War.

“These churches can be a good example of how people work together,” says Fijen. “We gave 12 different models of how these churches can be reused. And now we say to the politicians: please after Manifesta is closed, please keep asking these questions and decide what needs to be done.”

• Manifesta 16 Ruhr, multiple venues across the Ruhr area, Germany, 21 June-4 October 2026