Berlin Biennale

On the occasion of the 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, titled STILL PRESENT!, artists from around the globe engage with the legacies of modernity and the resulting state of planetary emergency. In addition to their works, the exhibition features historical documents, including political and activist publications from the Archiv der Avantgarden – Egidio Marzona (AdA). The contributions reveal connections between colonialism, fascism, and imperialism, and propose decolonial strategies for the future, oriented around a set of questions: How can a decolonial ecology be shaped? What role can non-Western feminist movements play in the reappropriation of historical narratives? How can the debate on restitution be reinvented beyond the return of plundered goods? Can the field of emotion be reclaimed through art?

Excerpt from Kader Attia’s curatorial statement:

“As diverse and varied as the worlds that comprise our current human reality are, they subsist amid the waste and cacophony that traverse global capitalism’s frantic and destructive race toward production. Since the onset of modernity, our planet has endured successive and ruinous changes that have accelerated alarmingly from the start of the third millennium. The place to which we have arrived today is not by chance: it is the result of historical formations constructed over centuries. In their egoism, modern Western societies have taken their own liberal character for granted, falsely assuming that the balance between free trade and universal suffrage guarantees a self-regulating system of universal democratic values. The dystopian society we have inherited from this utopian promise produces chaos but denies responsibility for it. In fact, the present world is the way it is because it carries all of the wounds accumulated throughout the history of Western modernity. Unrepaired, they continue to haunt our societies.

We must beware of the consequences of the capitalist logic of modernity/coloniality and its capacity to depoliticize the subject. The social worlds we inhabit today are articulated through cross-linked networked environments that interact in ways that are not immediately visible. More than ever before, algorithmic governance has taken over our present moment; it has become a field of unprecedented economic struggle over behavioral data extraction, which is such a powerful economic model that we feel powerless to free our present from its clutches. We project ourselves daily onto the future or past, while believing that we constantly act in the present. How do we reclaim our present? By reclaiming our attention. Art offers a present that is protracted and, above all, free. Inherent to emotion, consciousness is movement in the present: as emotional, interpretive beings, we are totally unpredictable in the present, and this allows us to escape the technologies of capitalist behavioral manipulation and imperialist governance that colludes with it. So more than ever, we must remain present!”

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Every two years, the Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art brings together international artists, theoreticians, and practitioners in exhibitions and accompanying programs. With its political profile, it stands for committed art that addresses the urgent questions of the present. The 12th Berlin Biennale takes place from June 11 to September 18, 2022, and is curated by Kader Attia.

Kader Attia looks back on more than two decades of decolonial engagement. As an artist, thinker, and activist, he has been particularly engaged with the notion of REPAIR—first of objects and physical injuries, and then of individual and societal traumas. Throughout his practice, repair has emerged as a mode of cultural resistance, a form of agency that finds expression in diverse practices and fields of knowledge. In his role as curator of the 12th Berlin Biennale, Attia makes this form of agency the starting point of a program that involves contributors and audiences in a critical conversation, in order to find ways together to care for the now.

Ana Teixeira Pinto, Đỗ Tường Linh, Marie Helene Pereira, Noam Segal, and Rasha Salti have been invited to join its artistic team. They work in close collaboration with Kader Attia, contributing their unique perspectives to the project’s core decolonial concept through the lenses of their diverse backgrounds and critical practices.

The international selection committee for the curatorship of the 12th Berlin Biennale included: Yael Bartana (artist, Amsterdam, NL, and Berlin, DE), Beatrice von Bismarck (professor of art history and visual culture at Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst / Academy of Fine Arts, Leipzig, DE), Anita Dube (artist and independent curator, Greater Noida, IN), Krist Gruijthuijsen (director of KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin), Sohrab Mohebbi (Kathe and Jim Patrinos Curator of the 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, US), Gabi Ngcobo (artist, educator, and independent curator, Johannesburg, ZA), and Gabriela Rangel (writer and director at Fundación Malba – Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, AR).

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Artists:

Alex Prager
Amal Kenawy
Ammar Bouras
Antonio Recalcati, Enrico Baj, Erró, Gianni Dova, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Roberto Crippa
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay
Asim Abdulaziz
Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme
Binta Diaw
Birender Yadav
Calida Garcia Rawles
Christine Safatly
Clément Cogitore
DAAR – Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti
Dana Levy
Đào Châu Hải
David Chavalarias
Deneth Piumakshi Veda Arachchige
Driss Ouadahi
Dubréus Lhérisson
Elske Rosenfeld
Etinosa Yvonne
Florian Sông Nguyễn
Forensic Architecture
Haig Aivazian
Hasan Özgür Top
Imani Jacqueline Brown
Jean-Jacques Lebel
Jeneen Frei Njootli
Jihan El-Tahri
João Polido
Khandakar Ohida
Lamia Joreige
Lawrence Abu Hamdan
Layth Kareem
Mai Nguyễn-Long
Maithu Bùi
Marta Popivoda/Ana Vujanović
Mathieu Pernot
Mayuri Chari
Mila Turajlić
Mónica de Miranda
Moses März
Myriam El Haïk
Ngô Thành Bắc
Nil Yalter
Noel W Anderson
Olivier Marboeuf
Omer Fast
PEROU – Pôle d’Exploration des Ressources Urbaines
Prabhakar Kamble
Praneet Soi
Raed Mutar
Sajjad Abbas
Sammy Baloji
Simone Fattal
Susan Schuppli
Susana Pilar
Sven Johne
Taloi Havini
Tammy Nguyen
Taysir Batniji
Tejswini Narayan Sonawane
Temitayo Ogunbiyi
The School of Mutants (Boris Raux, Hamedine Kane, Lou Mo, Stéphane Verlet Bottéro, Valérie Osouf)
Thùy-Hân Nguyễn-Chí
Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn
Uriel Orlow
Yuyan Wang
Zach Blas
Zuzanna Hertzberg

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Venues:

Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz
Dekoloniale Memory Culture in the City
Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin
KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Stasi Headquarters. Campus for Democracy

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https://12.berlinbiennale.de