I work site-specifically on performances, installations, books and films. Often in collaboration and over long periods of artistic-research, my projects include monographs, theatre plays, performance lectures, video installations and text based works that you can read about under Publications.
My research is grounded in an interest in history, I have a PhD in Art and Architectural history from Harvard University. I am a Professor at the Central European University Vienna and honorary Professor and Chair of Global Art at the University of Birmingham. Combining historical and speculative research, storytelling is often my method for finding missing narratives. My interests range widely from plants to surveillance.
Here is a link to Khadija CV
Here is a link to Portfolio_2025
For lecture introductions, please feel free to select / edit / re-combine the text below.
Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll works on colonial histories through contemporary art. She is currently working on a comparative history of repatriation. Her art practice involves montaging words and images within films and installations that voice alternate histories through texts and performances.
Khadija holds a PhD from Harvard University and has curated/co-created various exhibitions internationally including The Lost World (Part 2), Kranich Museum, Vienna Zocolo, and Botanical Drift.
On this website you can read about the stories she is working on in situations where dislocation and conflict lay bare the historical relationships between humans and objects. Art in the Time of Colony, her monograph was published in 2014, and her other work can be seen both on her publication page and on academia.edu.
This website presents a selection of the exhibition outcomes of her research. Her performances and videos have been shown most recently at the Venice Biennale, the Institute of Contemporary Art London, the Sharjah Biennale, and the National Maritime Museum London.
Inquiries are welcome, also from prospective PhD students. See the CEU pages, where she is Professor of History, for details.
Films Directed
From My Mother’s Country, 2026
Eternos Retornos, 2025
The Moon Says it is in Vienna, 2024
End Smoke, 2023
The Iyagbon Trilogy, 2023-
Uatunua, 2022
Te Moana, 2020
Te Haa Kui o Tangaroa, 2019
Reflecting Relational Traces, 2019
Processions for Tupaia, 2018
Cook’s New Clothes, 2018
Artists in Residence, 2016
Snail Eating Theatre, 2015
Ore Black Ore, 2014
Embassy Embassy, 2009
Selected Exhibitions and Performances
2025 Box with the Sense of its own Unbreaking and Eternos Retornos,
Wien Woche festival and Brotfabrik gallery
Te Ha Kui O Tangaroa, TBA-Academy for UN summits Nice and Cuba
2024 Tupaias Karikatur, Cook’s New Clothes, Schule des Sehens, Mainz, Germany
Iyagbon’s Mirror, Musée d’ethnographie de Genève Switzerland
2023 End Smoke, Wende Museum Los Angeles
Where there is… Strange Engine gallery, Melbourne
Uatunua, Again and A gain, Belvedere21 Vienna
Archive-Performances, Porto-Novo Benin Republic
Uatunua, EthnoKino Filmfestival Bern
2022 Tiny Unpredictable Material Objects, Forum Wissen Goettingen Germany
Again and A gain Center for the Less Good Idea, Johannesburg South Africa
Repatriates, Secession Vienna
Orchidism, Orchid House, Brisbane
Wind – Contingent Agency, Liquid Architecture Melbourne
2021 Monuments to Protest, Fluc Vienna
Te Moana, St Kilda Film Festival
Iyagbon’s Mirror, Kunsthaus Graz
2020 Critical Zones, ZKM Karlsruhe
Storytelling and the Sea, Manifesta 13, Marseilles
Ocean Archive, Ocean Space, Venice
Parliament of Waters, Dubai Expo, Sustainability Pavilion
Women in Waiting, Stanford University Nitery Theatre, San Francisco
2019 Deframed, Institute of Contemporary Art London
Ecocinema, Taxispalais, Austria
Botanical Drift, Motto Berlin
Between the Sheets, Parallel Art Fair Vienna
Reflecting Relational Traces, Sharjah Biennale
Palace of Ritual, Venice Biennale
Contingent Agencies, Research Pavilion, Venice
Cook’s New Clothes, Brunei Gallery, SOAS London
Cook’s New Clothes, University of Oslo
2018 Immigrate into your Shadows, The House theatre, Plymouth
Kunst Macht Frei, Bonavero Oxford
New Work, Styrx Gallery Birmingham
Men in Waiting, Nottingham Contemporary
Floral Alter-Agents, HKW Berlin
Why Listen to Plants? Liquid Architecture Daylesford
Art and Migration, Darwin Cambridge
The Gift, Fault Line, Australian Embassy Berlin
2017 Silver Sehnsucht, Frieze
The Restitution of Complexity, Austrian Cultural Forum London
Art in the Time of Colony Hay Festival
Snail Eating Theatre, International Film and Video Art Festival Casablanca
Shadows Talk, Konzerthaus Theatre, Bern
Limbah Berbunyi, Contemporary Art Jogjakarta
Botanical Drift, Vegetal Mediations, Translocal Budapest
2016 Imigrazie, Pesta Boneka Festival, Jogjakarta, Indonesia
Screening at LUX London, and Calvert22 Gallery London
Casablanca International Film and Video Festival, Morocco
2015 Snail Eating Theatre and Dissident Domesticity SPACE Gallery, London
A Breathcrystal, Project Space Dublin & Irish Film Institute
2014 Prison House, UrbanLab, London
Botanical Drift, Kew Gardens, London
Ethnographic Conceptualism and the City, University College London
Allegory of Cave Painting, Extracity Kunsthal, Antwerpen
Wilkommen, Bitte Gehen Sie Weiter, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
Investigated, Savvy Contemporary, Berlin, together with Jesse Shipley
2013 Skins Cloak, National Museum of Australia, Canberra
That Breathed, Chisenhale Gallery, London
2012 Partial Proclamations, permanent display, MAA Cambridge.
40,000 Years of Modern Art, Institute of Contemporary Art London, On Language series.
The Rise and fall, performance installation, Marrakech Biennale, Morocco.
2011 Vienna Zocalo, International Biennale Xalapa Mexico, Gallery Carlos Fuentes.
Kranich Museum, three new commissioned installations
2010 Embassy Embassy, installation, Homebase V Berlin
The Architect and The Urn, Greg Lundgren, Seattle, together with Alex Schweder
2007 Graffiti Monument, Venice Biennale, Memosphere, Rumanian Pavilion
Europe Lost and Found, Plausible Artworlds, Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art
Track Changes, Lost Highway Exhibition, Skuc Gallery Ljubljana
PARK[ing] day, Los Angeles, with Adobe Architects
Constructing Nature: Swiss Landscape Design, Harvard Graduate School of Design
2006 DADA, with Diller Scofidio Architects, Museum of Modern Art NYC.
2002 Insert New Image Here, Soho in Otterkring Festival, Vienna.