Dozens of artists bring new life to a gigantic former ironworks on
UNESCO's world heritage list
[May 09, 2026]
By DANIEL NIEMANN
VÖLKLINGEN, Germany (AP) — Dozens of urban artists from 17 countries
have converged on one of Europe's most important industrial landmarks
for a show that takes advantage of the former ironworks' sprawling
spaces and aura of abandonment.
At the Völklinger Hütte, or Völklingen Ironworks, the Urban Art Biennale
2026 is getting underway, continuing what has grown into a biennial
tradition over the past decade and a half.
“This location is at the core of street art and graffiti art,” said Ralf
Beil, the general director of the site, which is open to the public as a
museum. “It all began in industrial places like this.”
Artists “love this place and they do works for the Völklinger Hütte, in
the Völklinger Hütte, with the Völklinger Hütte,” he said.
This year's show features 50 artists. They include France-based Tomas
Lacque, whose installation features a small van, a pile of tires, toys
and debris covered in a coat of paint. Standing in a hall where furnaces
once worked, it appears to evoke fossil-fueled mobility being covered in
ash like Pompeii.
Spanish artist Ampparito has painted the words “no hay nada de valor”
(roughly, "There is nothing of value here") in huge white letters on the
roof of one of the site's massive sheds — a work best seen from a
viewing platform 45 meters (148 feet) above ground level.
Dutch artist Boris Tellegen, better known as Delta, contributed a
massive green-and-black wooden sculpture that lights up the interior of
the ironworks. French-based collective Vortex-X, who recycle salvaged
material, stretched rays of white industrial fabric across one of the
building's halls in a work titled “Memory in transit.”
The ironworks spreads over a 6-hectare (nearly 15-acre) site, a maze of
chimneys and furnaces in which visitors still encounter ominous
industrial-era signs warning of risks such as a “danger of crushing.”
They dominate the town of Völklingen, near Germany’s border with France.
They have been on UNESCO’s world heritage list since 1994, recognized as
“the only intact example, in the whole of western Europe and North
America, of an integrated ironworks that was built and equipped in the
19th and 20th centuries.”
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The installation "Transit der Erinnerung", Transit of Memory, by
artist Vortex-X is on display at the at the former ironworks
Voelklinger Huette, World Cultural Heritage Site, as part of the
exhibition Urban Art Biennale 2026 in Voelklingen, Germany,
Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (Oliver Dietze/dpa via AP)
The furnaces have been cold since 1986, when production ended, and the
site has been preserved as it was then. But its appearance is much
older, as no new installations were added after the mid-1930s.
“It’s so dusty and it’s so old, but it’s beautiful, you know, there’s
beauty in decay,” said British artist Remi Rough. “I think what I’ve
done makes you kind of just perceive it in a bit of a different way.”
Rough contributed small paintings that he said were meant to be “very
clean and clinical,” in contrast to the site.
Danish artist Anders Reventlov said he felt “humble to be able to do
something here.”
“As somebody told me ... it was hell to work here,” he said. “Now it’s
not hell. It’s like a nice place, people walking around, there are bees,
there are beautiful flowers, but yeah, we still remember the history and
that’s super important.”
Beil said that organizers “want pieces which are really original for
this space and this also is then prohibiting (them) from being
commercial."
“This is an installation for the space,” he said. “This is pure art.”
The Biennale opens Saturday and runs until Nov. 15.
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Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.
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