Passing the fugitive on-the 13th Berlin Biennale

A biennal in the shadow of controversy

In 2022, artist Kader Attia curated the 12th Berlin Biennale, which opened almost simultaneously with Documenta 15 in Kassel. While Documenta nearly imploded in the aftermath of a debate about anti-Semitism, the Berlin Biennale faced other types of issues. One of the works in the biennale contained enlarged reproductions of the grotesque photographs depicting torture scenes from Abu Ghraib. Three Iraqi artists decided to withdraw their works from the biennale in protest against what they perceived as a continuation of US occupation violence, and an open and heated debate ensued between the curator and the artists. In the end, the fallout was not as dramatic as for documenta, but not long after the biennial ended, it was announced that the next edition would be postponed from 2024 to 2025 due to “COVID-related reasons,” which is still the official line. However, this happened long after Covid-related reasons could reasonably justify such a delay, and press scrutiny made it clear that the problems were instead related to the fact that the curator who was officially about to be appointed for 2024, a young curator from Calcutta, had committed a high-profile rape in Mumbai a few years earlier. It’s assumed that the resulting change in curators significantly delayed the process.

But the Biennale's preparations continued to face problems. In early 2024, Kunst-Werke, the organizing institution behind the Biennale, released a statement:

“The use of derogatory language, any form of harassment, racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, sexism, transphobia, ableism, queerphobia, classism and any other form of discrimination and derogatory behaviour will not be tolerated at KW, nor will incitement to hatred, violence, bullying or negative stereotyping of individuals or groups of people. KW distances itself from the behaviour and exchange on social media of one of its board members with other parties. The institution is investigating further steps.”

The statement raised many questions, but it became clear that the statement was indirectly aimed at a specific board member, and resignations soon followed. Axel Wallrabenstein was the first to resign, followed shortly afterwards by artist Adam Pendleton and finally collector Pedro Barbosa. While Pendleton and Barbosa's reasons for resigning remain unclear, Wallrabenstein's are more obvious, as he has openly and repeatedly expressed Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian views on the X platform, something that had previously escaped wider attention. Wallrabenstein has worked directly with the marketing of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) in the Berlin Senate and is a personal friend of Joe Chialo, until recently responsible for the city's culture budget.

A tense climate

Germany – and Berlin in particular – is undergoing a dramatic transformation, marked by heightened rhetoric and a wave of cancellations. For a very long time, the city has been a central meeting place for the international art scene, but this has changed drastically in a short period of time. The AfD (Alternative for Germany) and racism are on the rise, and the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) is proposing to ban the AfD. The most widely publicized Correctiv exposé of coup plans for 2023, involving AfD politicians, neo-Nazis, far-right organizations and ‘ordinary’ businessmen conspiring to carry out mass deportations – so-called ‘repatriation’ – echoes uncomfortably from the last century. Severe cuts to Berlin's culture budget, skyrocketing rents, increasing restrictions on freedom of expression, repeated police violence and deportations of peaceful demonstrators are contributing to an increasingly oppressive atmosphere. Initiatives such as Strike Germany, which calls for a boycott of German cultural institutions, as well as a noticeable exodus of artists from the city, testify to a dramatic shift that is currently underway.

One institution that has secured long-term funding, however, and thus stands out as a shining exception in the otherwise rather miserable economic situation of Berlin's cultural scene, is the Biennale. Its budget, which is admittedly quite modest compared to several other international biennials, amounts to around three million euros, and expectations were high that this year's edition would in some way comment on the immediate context. But how do you carry out a high-profile art biennial in an environment characterized by suspicion and reduced freedom of expression without losing face?

KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 2025, Image: Raisa Galofre / Sophiensæle, 2025; image: Raisa Galofre / Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, 2025; image: Raisa Galofre / Former Courthouse Lehrter Straße, 13th Berlin Biennale, 2025; image: Raisa Galofre

A fox’s game in pressing times

The 13th Berlin Biennale, entitled Passing the Fugitive On, curated by Zasha Colah together with co-curator Valentina Viviani, takes as its starting point the theme of “foxing” – a verb evoking the traits often attributed to the foxes: cunning, disguise and elusiveness. Colah’s decision to keep the list of artists secret until the press preview can be read as a strategic game of foxing. In a Germany where freedom of expression is under pressure, this can also be interpreted as a protective mechanism for the artists. For those who remember the death threats against a Palestinian artist collective and the vandalism of their exhibition space ahead of documenta 2022, the logic is easy to grasp.

Germany is also adapting the controversial IHRA definition of antisemitism as a guideline for cultural funding, whereby recipients commit to countering antisemitism in accordance with the IHRA and ensuring that their funding does not support antisemitic expressions. In practice, this means – as several cultural workers have already experienced – that if you have ‘liked’ something on social media that could be interpreted as pro-BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) Israel at any time after May 2019, when the resolution was adopted, you are formally excluded from all opportunities to receive salaries, grants or support from state or municipal funding. However, it is sufficient to have expressed pro-Palestinian views. Many use the term ‘philosemitic McCarthyism’ to describe the situation. Academics, artists, exhibitions, scholarships and award ceremonies are being cancelled at a rapid pace, and many are deciding to simply remain silent in order to safeguard their position.

 Keeping the list of artists secret until the opening gave the curator greater room to maneuver – and, above all, ensured the exhibition’s realization and avoided the participants being cast under suspicion.

Colah’s catalogue text is short but loaded with ambiguity and silent resistance. It also includes a poem – The Joker’s Address – which serves as the exhibition’s sharpest statement. (in its full in the box)

With a solid academic background in international exhibitions and a dissertation on illegality and meta-exhibition practices in the Indo-Myanmar region, Colah now seems intent on translating her research into curatorial praxis. However, it’s not always easy to convert research-based processes into exhibition formats—this ambition often results in overly text-heavy presentations where artworks become mere illustrations of a theory. But Colah has chosen a different path. Her ambition to reshape the relationship between artworks and audiences is evident in her emphasis on direct, embodied forms of expression—with a special focus on the intersection of injustice and comedy. The Biennale includes theatre productions, performances, reading groups, tribunals, memory walks, and stand-up comedy. All these forms contribute to what she calls “restorative laughter,” which she sees as a central component of her curatorial method. Additionally, the Biennale presents four sister institutions offering parallel exhibitions and film programs with similar themes. This makes it quite difficult to assess all parts of the exhibition, given its sprawling nature in both time and form.

The emphasis on oral traditions, which in their directness can carry messages across time and between generations, is linked to Colah’s view of art’s place outside the institution – especially in contexts marked by military dictatorships or repressive regimes. Works that emerge in these contexts can be difficult to identify as art, and Colah urges us to trust their potential “unreadability” – to use our own “illiteracy” as a starting point. Usually, Colah argues, art history is written based on what has been documented, exhibited in museums or placed on pedestals. But then we miss out on all the art created in prisons, on the streets or in markets – works that live on through being told, over and over again. It is this marginalized art history that she seeks to bring into the limelight, and it is probably these very works that escape the attention of most critics.

With this framework in mind, we can begin to read the biennial's works and structure in relation to their context. Two of the venues are institutionally familiar: Kunst-Werke, where the biennial's office is located, and the contemporary art museum Hamburger Bahnhof. Colah has chosen to use only a small part of Hamburger Bahnhof. Two new exhibition venues have also been added temporarily: a former courthouse and Sophiensäle, a theatre with a strong political history. The building has housed everything from a craftsmen's union to the revolutionary left with Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht as its spokespeople. During the Nazi era, propaganda was also produced here with the help of forced laborers, and during the GDR it became a workshop for the Maxim Gorki Theatre.

However, the lion's share of the exhibition is concentrated in KW and the old courthouse where Karl Liebknecht underwent his second trial behind closed doors. Liebknecht called the trial a comedy, which Italian artist Anna Scalfi Eghenter has taken up in her work, which spans several rooms. In the first room, visitors encounter a literal whirlwind of reprints of Liebknecht's pamphlets, in which he condemned the German military machine and identified the violent actions of the imperialist government as the real enemy.

The legendary first DADA exhibition in Berlin opened in 1920, the year after Liebknecht was assassinated by right-wing extremists. In connection with the exhibition, artists John Heartfield and Rudolf Schlichter were prosecuted for defamation of the German military because of a doll they had hung from the ceiling, depicting a soldier with a pig's head (Prussian Archangel). In the courthouse, the doll has been brought to life and marches at Tempelhof's old airport in a filmed performance, From Heaven High by Simon Wachsmuth. Both of these works, as quite a few more works, definitely resonate in Germany today.

In the courthouse, all the works, thrown together in a rather haphazard manner, bear a striking resemblance to an exhibition hung by an art school class without curatorial assistance. This is, of course, a deliberate choice, and one certainly does not need pedestals to see works as art, but a focus on the works themselves feels like a prerequisite for the audience to be able to grasp their message in the best possible way. It's about small, simple details such as removing nails and screws, filling and painting the walls, installing lighting, making sure the works hang straight without curling, not tripping over headphone cables, ensuring that the seats in front of the video works are comfortable, that the sun does not shine directly into the video works, that blackout curtains are in place and do not look shabby... These are important details that help visitors focus and show respect for the art. If neither the curator nor the artists installing the works take the presentation seriously, why should the viewer?

Setting aside these details and focusing instead on the substance of the works, the label 'political poster art' may seem somewhat reductive, as the works rarely agitate – though it’s not entirely inaccurate. There is a wide selection of works dealing with corrupt legal systems and civil rights – at all exhibition venues. The works deal with injustices in Sudan, Srebrenica, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, Afghanistan, Egypt, Zambia and Namibia side by side, and in theory they could form a chorus in which the voices complement each other. But instead of enhancing or clarifying each other, the result is rather fragmented. The focus on many injustices in general – even if each injustice is specific – becomes too diluted to be perceived as a collective voice. Instead, each work ends up in a kind of symbolic vacuum – without the necessary charge that a clearer local anchoring or a curatorial confrontation with the current situation in Germany could provide. What could have been a symphonic choir, where different experiences interact and reinforce each other, becomes instead a rather mediocre cacophony where each contribution is drowned out by the next.

The metaphor of a choir is used literally in a work by Zambian-Norwegian artist Anawana Haloba. Through eight sculptural forms, voices belonging to historical and mythical figures resound. Haloba's experimental opera is part of her ongoing sound-based research on oral traditions in southern Africa. The work takes the voice as a narrative instrument and challenges the boundaries of Western opera. The characters are a mixture of legendary and historical women: Mukamusaba, Alice Lenshina and Lucy Sichone – Haloba's ‘female Fanons’. Through songs, masks and oral tradition, Haloba recounts their struggle against colonialism and patriarchal structures. The opera becomes a place of collective memory and resistance, where voices from different parts of the world come together in a “high song of resistance.”

The sculptures are not only beautiful, but together they also form a force field – which, however, loses some of its charge by being placed far apart in an overly large room. Nevertheless, Haloba's work emerges as a concretization of what the curators' ideal image of the exhibition could look like. The problem is that they fail where Haloba succeeds.

However, the visual expression of the exhibition appears completely different at KW, where the institutional setting and KW's technicians have eliminated the distracting ‘little things’, even if the whole remains fragmentary and anecdotal. Several of the biennial’s strongest works are also found here – mainly installed on the ground floor, which has been rebuilt to accommodate Margherita Moscardini’s sculpture consisting of a staircase, The Stairway, 2025, built from 561 stones. Each stone is engraved with a number referring to its legal status. Moscardini has donated each stone to stateless, supranational and “extraterritorial” organizations such as universities and indigenous peoples, who were then asked to donate them back as building blocks for the staircase/sculpture. The sculpture is displayed alongside a series of certificates hung on the wall. The work is presented as a manifestation of the idea of stateless stones, an experiment in which we are all guests on a planet that was once owned by no one. The question is what the aesthetic design of the work actually adds. It is not an interestingly designed staircase, it is quite useless (only two people can walk on it at one time) and if the intention is to impress with its monumental size, the location is not successful, as the staircase is drowned out in the large room.

Several works at KW embody humor in a literal sense, such as the comic strips by graphic novelist Sarnath Banerjee, originally from Calcutta but based in Berlin. The drawings are presented in combination with audio tracks and comment on various events in a rather silly way, which makes many people smile. It is a work that fits well with Colah's description of works that are not normally considered art. However, the work probably only passes the art test because it is presented on specially built pedestals in an institutional context, which contradicts Colah's theory.

A work that clearly illustrates the curatorial team's idea of resistance with both an aesthetic dimension and a measure of humour is Panties for Peace. Panties for Peace was an action by the Thai Lanna Action Network in which women sent panties to military leaders in protest against the 2006 coup. The action played on a Burmese cultural belief that men's hpoun – masculine power and honor – can be destroyed by contact with women's underwear, and used this as a humorous and effective means of resistance between 2007 and 2010. It is playful and provocative, definitely “foxing” – while also carrying a strong activist charge. But are the blogs, drawings and actions that expressed Panties for Peace really art? If one sees the institutional framework as what constitutes a work, then yes, the curators have transformed this into art. But in that case, who is the artist – is it the curator? It feels almost anachronistic to ask that question; like something out of the 1990s. And yet the question remains: why is it important for the curator to incorporate this political protest into art history? Can the transformation into art really add further meaning? It is doubtful and seems contrived.

But there are other examples that are both better, clearer and fit perfectly into all categories, most notably Akademia Ruchu (The Movement Academy), a Polish artist group that developed performance art in public spaces in the 1970s and 1980s as part of anti-communist resistance. Through absurd and choreographed movements in everyday situations – such as in Potknięcie, where the group repeatedly stumbled in front of the Communist Party headquarters – they challenged the public order by peaceful means. The works mixed visual, performative and theatre-based expressions, often outside institutional frameworks, but which are brilliant inside KW.

The most striking work at the biennial is a blurred video documentation of the work The Fly by Htein Lin, originally created and performed in front of a few other political prisoners in Myanmar. In the Paris video version, we see him naked and bound under a spotlight, obsessed with a buzzing fly – a microcosm of resistance in which he eventually devours the fly and is transformed from prisoner to tormentor, from physically bound to mentally free. The work reflects his experiences of exile, torture and long-term imprisonment, where art became a means of survival. Lin did not attend the opening, as he is banned from leaving the country.

Throughout, one wonders how the biennial's budget has been used – or not used. The travel, transport and hotel costs for forty artists certainly account for a significant part of the budget, but there are far fewer new productions than older ones, and only one larger spatial intervention has been made. Spectacular or elaborate installations are also conspicuous by their absence; the works are almost exclusively easy to install or transport. Nor are there any particularly technology-heavy works on display. The exhibition exudes more of an air of “take what you can get” than a display of vanity. Perhaps the decision was made to leave part of the budget as a buffer for the next round?

However, since its opening in June, the critical reception has been lukewarm in both German and international media. The two most common objections are that the art is not particularly interesting and that the biennial does not speak to its surroundings or context in a direct or adequate way. Arts Culture Alliance Berlin, which collects information about cancellations by cultural workers, takes it a step further, noting that the biennial has hired writer Kito Nedo to write one of the catalogue texts. Nedo gained international attention in late 2024 for his anti-Palestinian ‘investigations’ of artists. Nedo has actively worked to cancel artists by sending emails about which pro-Palestinian posts they had ‘liked’ on social media and also by collecting signatures for the general demands of Strike Germany. The Arts Culture Alliance Berlin thus questions the very foundation of the biennial, ‘as the mechanisms that sustain it are complicit in Germany's financial, material and diplomatic support for Israel's genocide in Gaza, the atrocities in the West Bank and the bombings of Lebanon, Iran, Syria and Yemen.’

Right now, Berlin's art scene is, quite simply, in a bind. So far, the 2020s in Berlin have echoed the 1920s. How do we move forward?

The place of art in an age of censorship and self-censorship

There is courage in Colah's method. By staging a biennial that defies unambiguous interpretation and resists the demands of German cultural policy for loyalty, she testifies to a different form of curatorial attitude – one that refuses to play along with a system in which critical art risks being silenced or cast under suspicion. But the question is what is lost when fear of censorship leads to such a fragmented curatorial narrative. Perhaps it is precisely in this balancing act between protection and clarity, between caution and force, that the biennial's main problem lies.