-------- Weitergeleitete Nachricht --------
Betreff: Kyiv Biennial – A Bird That Cannot Land
Datum: Tue, 19 May 2026 17:00:26 +0200
Von: KW Institute for Contemporary Art <[email protected]>
11.06.–13.09.26 at KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Kyiv Biennial at KW
On Wed, 10.06.26 from 19:00, KW will open a chapter of the Kyiv
Biennial, an expansive exhibition, live and discursive program that
takes place across all floors of the building and throughout the summer
months.
This chapter is curated by KW's curatorial team and organised in close
collaboration with the Visual Culture Research Center, the founders of
the Kyiv Biennial.
We look forward to welcoming you to the opening!
11.06.–13.09.26
Kyiv Biennial
A Bird That Cannot Land
Lesia Vasylchenko, Night Without Shadows and Light Without Rippling of
Waves, 2025. Courtesy the artist © the artist.
The sense by which we take our bearings in the
real world […] is being destroyed.
– Hannah Arendt, Truth and Politics
The Kyiv Biennial is a nomadic, international project that interweaves
artistic, political, and social issues. A Bird That Cannot Land, its
chapter at KW, takes shape as an extensive live and discursive program
and a large-scale exhibition spanning the entire building, contributing
to the biennial’s reflections through contemporary art, sound, and exchange.
Situated in shifting political realities, A Bird That Cannot Land
centers on the notion of a “Middle-East-Europe” and its histories of
dispute, coloniality, and imperialism. Recurring conflicts reopen the
wounds of those preceding them and challenge our sense of shared
experience, language, and imagination. By linking post-Soviet Eastern
Europe with Central and Southwest Asia, and the Mediterranean, the
exhibition and its live and discursive events turn to questions on how
we make meaning and experience belonging in times marked by war,
uncertainty, and estrangement. Moving through realities where the
continuity of meaning is broken, the biennial understands exile in and
from the world as a central condition of contemporary life.
Amid this landscape, A Bird That Cannot Land aims to open spaces for
listening to interconnected pasts and presents, and for rethinking how
geographies, histories, and realities are told and perceived. The
biennial features over 40 intergenerational and international voices
from Berlin and beyond. The works featured are shaped by lived
experiences echoing rupture, migrant memories, their affective
architectures, and the historical traces that persist both in bodies and
in the spaces we inhabit.
The biennial’s live program foregrounds embodied, collective, and
process-based practices that engage Berlin’s diasporic communities.
Across performances, concerts, and listening sessions, sound is used to
explore political and geographic relationships while polyphonic voices
act as carriers of history, affect, and resilience. The discursive
program further invites academic debates on matters of migration,
exclusion, and co-existence, as well as extractivism and petrocapitalism.
Participants:Abdullah Miniawy, Adam Hanieh, Alona Karavai, Anna
Ehrenstein and Yara Mekawei, Anna Zvyagintseva, Anton Kats and the
Grounded Outer Space People, Assaf Gruber, Aykan Safoğlu, Bulgarian
Voices Berlin, Dana Kavelina, Eda Aslan, Farahnaz Sharifi, Fehras
Publishing Practices, Flaka Haliti, Geta Brătescu, Gulnur Mukazhanova,
Heinali and Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko, Hito Steyerl, Hiwa K, Ihor
Tsymbrovsky, Ivan Krastev, Joyce Joumaa, Julia Cimafiejeva, Katarina
Gryvul, Lesia Vasylchenko, Lida Abdul, Lucia Kagramanyan, Madina
Tlostanova, Majd Abdel Hamid, Mona Hatoum, Nazanin Noori, Neda Saeedi,
Nikima Jagudajev, Nour Sokhon, Oleksiy Radynski, Philipp Goll, Samia
Halaby, Saodat Ismailova, Sattar Stas Shärifullá and Ziliä Qansurá,
Seyyare – Anatolian Women’s Choir, Stefaniia Bodnia and Jack Dove, Tjan
Zaotschnaja, Tolia Astakhishvili, Ulrike Herrmann, Wafaa Saied
In 2025, the Kyiv Biennial took place across Europe through a series of
exhibitions and events, including at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw,
M HKA in Antwerp, the Dnipro Center for Contemporary Culture, the
Dovzhenko Centre in Kyiv, and Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz. A Bird That
Cannot Land expands on the themes from the biennial’s various 2025
iterations.
Discover the Live Program
Read more <https://newslettertogo.com/rimnoamr-bmftxbnb-cb4cucs2-ezg>
Discover the Discursive Program
Read more <https://newslettertogo.com/rimnoamr-bmftxbnb-h9xqvgo7-b11>
KW Curatorial Team:
Curator: Sofie Krogh Christensen
Assistant Curator: Linda Franken
Exhibition Assistant: Radia Soukni
Live Curator: Lorena Juan
Live Assistant Curator: Nikolas Brummer
Live Program Assistant : Saba Bagheri
Discursive Program Curator: Vasyl Cherepanyn
Discursive Program Assistant: Triin Metsla
Expanded Curatorial Team:
Vasyl Cherepanyn, Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC), Kyiv
Emma Enderby, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin
Nav Haq, M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp
Sarah Jonas, Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz
Serge Klymko, Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC), Kyiv
Magda Lipska, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
In collaboration with
Funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural
Foundation). Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural
Foundation) is funded by the Beauftragter der Bundesregierung für Kultur
und Medien (German Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media).
The discursive program is funded by the Bundeszentrale für politische
Bildung (German Federal Agency for Civic Education)
Additional support by the DAAD’s Berlin Artists’ Programme, funded by
the Federal Foreign Office (AA)
Mediapartner
KW Institute for Contemporary Art is institutionally supported by the
Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion.
Support the program of KW and Berlin Biennale and become a member of the
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KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin
+49 30 243 459–69
E-mail <mailto:[email protected]>
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Auguststraße 69
10117 Berlin
kw-berlin.de <https://newslettertogo.com/rimnoamr-bmftxbnb-sf7pj3ue-cfz>
Wed – Mon, 11:00–19:00
Tue closed
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