The launch press convention for the 2025 Berlin Biennale, on the Sophiensäle within the metropolis’s Mitte district, was stuffed to capability. First to talk was Katarzyna Wielgow-Skolimowska, inventive director of Germany’s Federal Cultural Basis, for a few years a principal supporter of the biennale. This 12 months’s exhibition, she informed the viewers, exuded its political credentials: “This biennale directs our gaze onto Berlin and the broader world concurrently. The urgency of the current is showcased by many works fashioned underneath navy violence and judicial arbitrariness.”
Zasha Colah, the Indian-born curator for the thirteenth Biennale, took a extra circumspect tone. As a curator, Colah’s work has usually centered on repressive contexts, and he or she has expertise curating biennales: the Pune Biennale, and as co-curator of the Yinchuan Biennale in China in 2018.
This was a biennale on pondering even in probably the most constrained circumstances, she informed the gathering. It was an anguished time, she continued, with media, the cultural panorama and politics in unrest.
A query from a journalist introduced one thing of this anguish into the press convention. Had been there any invited artists who declined to take part within the present, citing their affiliation with Strike Germany? One, Colah acknowledged. It was a choice that she revered, she added. Neither wanted to say something extra about Strike Germany to the viewers. Over the previous two years, the alliance of artists, curators and different public figures had assumed symbolic prominence within the political turmoil roiling Germany’s cultural establishments.
Kunst-Werke Berlin. Picture: GoodieL / Supply: Wikimedia Commons
A key component in Strike Germany’s formation was opposition to Germany’s unequivocal assist of Israel within the wake of the continuing Gaza struggle. The dependence of German cultural establishments on state funding, Strike Germany argued, renders them subservient to Germany’s Staatsräson. That means “purpose of state”, this precept – articulated by Germany’s long-term chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) in 2008 – locations Israel’s safety as central to Germany’s nationwide curiosity. This attitude is grounded within the nation’s historic duty for the Holocaust.
After October 2023 – when the Hamas assault on Israel sparked the continuing, damaging navy marketing campaign in Gaza – Staatsräson started to be interpreted with better breadth, and more and more on cultural exercise in Germany. By late 2023, hardly every week glided by with out a number of stories of cancelled exhibitions, award reveals postponed indefinitely, or rescinded visitor professorships. In distinguished circumstances, Jewish-identifying artists like Candice Breitz and public intellectuals like Masha Gessen have been accused of crossing a line with their criticism of the Gaza struggle.
This, nonetheless, is however an amplified side of a broader context – German cultural establishments are more and more vigilant with respect to all issues regarding Israel and Palestine. Even earlier than the Gaza struggle, this vigilance often erupted into full-scale public controversies, as with the artwork exhibition documenta fifteen in 2022.
Held each 5 years within the German metropolis of Kassel, the staging of the large-scale up to date artwork present was curated by Indonesian collective ruangrupa. Their curatorial mannequin was constructed on communal art-making, taking inspiration from Indonesia’s rural “lumbung” – communal storage barns for harvested rice. However the limits of the curatorial idea, meant to foreground marginalised views from the World South, grew to become obvious after vociferous accusations of antisemitism have been directed towards particular displays. One prominently positioned work, bearing apparent antisemitic tropes, was cordoned off with a curtain earlier than being eliminated altogether. Within the furore that ensued, the documenta’s common director, Sabine Schormann, was pressured to resign. The consensus within the public discourse was that she ought to have been extra proactive in avoiding or counteracting the disaster.
This fraught context weighed closely on the thirteenth Berlin Biennale, which featured 60 artists and artwork collectives and 170 works, round half of those specifically commissioned for the exhibition. It was the primary to be staged because the starting of the Gaza struggle. Breaking with the standard two-year cycle, the present opened in mid-June 2025, a 12 months later than regular. Colah’s curatorial idea was “Passing the Fugitive On”, anchored by artwork’s refined energy to subvert by way of hide-and-seek and thru humour.
In an interview with the German-language journal Museumsjournal earlier than the opening, Colah in contrast artwork biennales to video games of chess, with the involvement of many alternative stakeholders. As status tasks, biennales have been constrained by political directives and needed to navigate invisible pink tape.
Most of the works on show have been oriented round subversive acts within the face of oppression, previous and current. Myanmar, as soon as once more underneath navy rule following a 2021 coup, had a robust presence. “I wished to indicate the nation’s mature arts scene, it deserves extra consideration”, Colah informed Index within the first of two prolonged conversations. Myanmar’s most distinguished consultant on the biennale was Htein Lin. Twice imprisoned prior to now by navy regimes, he was unable to go away the nation, having been denied a passport.
On show on the KW Institute for Up to date Artwork (KW) – historically the primary web site of the biennale – was a recording of the The Fly (2008), a efficiency that Htein first staged in jail for fellow detainees. At one other venue, the previous Courthouse, Lehrter Strasse, the place artwork focuses on themes of legality and illegality, Htein’s jail work are offered throughout a number of rooms.
Again at KW, Lanna Motion for Burma Committee, a feminist artist collective in exile, had a piece one ground up from The Fly. Panties for Peace, because the title suggests, harnesses humour to undermine the iniquity of navy rule. Drawing from an area superstition that contact with ladies’s underwear can weaken males, Lanna Motion’s interventions have prior to now included mailing ladies’s underwear to Burma’s embassies and placing up candidates with sobriquets like Madame Knickerbocker Glory for elections within the nation.
Regardless of – or maybe due to – the exhibition’s overt political tone and foregrounding of worldwide injustice, the biennale drew criticism from these anticipating … properly, extra on Palestine. Some reviewers have been annoyed with the biennale’s “grating evasiveness” (Artwork in America); others discovered the exhibition “unusually muted within the context of a Berlin that has, over the previous 16 months, been the centre of intense political turmoil” (Frieze).
And this poses an vital query. Had been the perceived shortcomings of the Berlin Biennale the results of oversight or omission – and if the latter, whose? Assuming {that a} clear curatorial positionality was out of the query inside the institutional framework, even when this had been the intention of the present’s makers, it’s nonetheless price asking: Did the exhibition do something in the best way of gestures of solidarity? And if that’s the case, how did it go about this? Conversations with the biennale’s curator and director, in addition to with a number of of the collaborating artists – and with one who was approached however in the end didn’t participate – recommend that the exhibition wrestled with this on a number of ranges. However, the consequence falls in need of what the curator, and even the establishment of the biennale itself, had anticipated.
There have been clear makes an attempt in a number of the displays, it ought to be stated, to precise some sense of solidarity with Palestine. And, as Index learnt from a dialog with the creator of a centrally exhibited multimedia work, the curators themselves took – at the very least at instances – an invested method to the Palestine query. As a result of the piece in query had been created underneath circumstances of intense “nervousness and militarisation”, and to keep away from placing parts of the mission in danger, the artist solely agreed to talk with Index on situation of full anonymity.
In early levels of planning the work, the artist and the curators – Zasha Colah and her co-curator Valentina Viviani – mentioned the quantity of inventive house that might be lent to expressions of solidarity with Palestine. Did the curators attempt to cease the artist from taking a transparent stance on the difficulty, anxious a couple of potential public backlash? Fairly the alternative: “They repeatedly requested [that the core of the exhibit be changed] to accommodate Palestine, and stored arising with a bunch of concepts on how a gesture of solidarity might be included. A few of them have been gimmicky …”. In different circumstances, the options ran counter to the artist’s regular work follow. Did the artist really feel this was an uncommon transfer by curators? “Sure!” However, the artist did admire the try at inventive interjection: “The curator’s coronary heart was in the suitable place.” The artist noticed that in any case, their work was pushed by parallel relations to Palestine. Finally, they agreed on a gesture of solidarity to be integrated into the work.
However when the time got here to attract up contracts and talk about the specifics of the set up, extra folks joined the dialog. And never everybody, it appeared, wished to sing from the identical hymn sheet. The artist recalled a Zoom assembly in February this 12 months: “Once I talked about Palestine … a member of the executive workforce grew to become visibly tense. It was as in the event that they’d been unaware of all of the discussions we’d been having for months. I might see Zasha and Valentina really feel [sic] uncomfortable about this.” Regardless of the stress, the executive workforce and the artists agreed on the specifics of the work’s implementation, together with a number of pro-Palestinian gestures.
However then it was the artist who didn’t comply with by way of. When Colah unpacked what the artist had despatched over, the brand new model had been markedly toned down and now carried a distinct symbolism altogether. Over to the artist: why the change of coronary heart? “For me, this selection was about resisting the best way such symbols usually get pulled into the advertising of struggle and spectacle”, the artist noticed.
Was the biennale making an attempt to counter fears of a backlash like these confronted by the documenta organisers in attempting to ring-fence, in a fashion of talking, house for Palestinian views and Palestinian solidarity? At one level, at the very least one Palestinian artist was anticipated to take part within the biennale. In the end, the artist declined the invitation. Colah facilitated contact between this artist, from Jerusalem, and Index.
The artist was “by no means absolutely in”, Index learnt. After being approached by Colah in the summertime of 2024, they participated in a collection of conversations, having confidence within the curator’s clear place on the Palestine subject. Within the artist’s notion, the biennale appeared eager to maneuver on to the logistics of establishing the work. In December 2024, the artist had a gathering with the biennale’s director and curators. It was at this level that it grew to become clear, to the artist, that participation was unimaginable. “There was no clear assertion, route or any structural positionality, which is the least I anticipate amidst ongoing genocide”, the artist informed Index.
If artists invited to take part within the biennale had been capable of forge alliances with one another, issues could have developed considerably in a different way; they’d have been capable of reinforce their political stance, understanding that they’d not stand alone ought to controversy ensue. However that they had no details about the identification of different invited artists. The biennale had determined to maintain the complete participation checklist embargoed, solely releasing it to the general public on the day of the press convention.
This, Index was informed by biennale workers, was meant to forestall the artists’ participation from being politicised earlier than the opening. It displays one other lesson from documenta fifteen. Within the months main as much as the Kassel exhibition, documenta had grappled with a number of accusations regarding members supporting the Boycott, Diversify and Sanctions (BDS) marketing campaign concentrating on Israel. In 2019, the German Bundestag handed a non-binding decision declaring the BDS motion antisemitic.
Nicely-meaning as the choice to not disclose the artist checklist could appear, it did have the impact of isolating the artists; they needed to make the choice about collaborating alone. This may increasingly clarify, at the very least partially, why not one of the a number of withdrawals grew to become public. Along with the Palestinian artist who spoke with Index, a number of different artists – most with ties to the Center East – both withdrew or turned down the invitation. “Three of the mission proposals have been in very closing levels, together with analysis visits to Berlin,” Colah informed Index. In accordance with the curators, the artists feared that participation would have repercussions for his or her future careers.
The Palestinian artist from Jerusalem who had been approached suspected that the biennale had wished to incorporate a light Palestinian voice. The artist doubted, nonetheless, that it will be the work itself that the viewers could be specializing in. “Within the present German context, it’s not just like the paintings would ever be assessed on its advantage, nonetheless poetic it could be.” Throughout their closing assembly, Axel Wieder, the biennale’s director, appeared intent on persuading the artist to hitch, the artist felt. However on asking how the biennale might shield them, what the artist was informed was not passable.
Behind the scenes, it appeared that workers have been attempting to tease out whether or not a number of the exhibition’s different members have been keen to face with the Palestinian artist within the occasion of a public backlash. Individually, the nameless artist accountable for the multimedia work commented that, over the course of a 12 months, the method relating to Palestinian solidarity modified. “First, they requested if we might stand with the Palestinian artists. Nonetheless, we had no clue who they have been, and later we didn’t know who dropped out and why. The dialog ultimately shifted to asking us to include symbols of Palestine into our work.”
Past maintaining the participation checklist secret and informally sounding out potential alliances between friends, what’s a biennale’s position in defending its artists, given the current German context – and what practical steps can it take by means of assist? “We have been clear on the truth that we weren’t going to take any works out of the present. We had full belief within the curator and the artists”, Axel Wieder, director of the Berlin Biennale informed Index. And: “We concentrate on features which are inside our space of management.” Index learnt that the biennale does have a disaster handbook, however was unable to glean a lot about its concrete operation in follow.
Wieder took over as director of the Berlin Biennale a 12 months in the past, following Gabriele Horn’s two-decade tenure. When he joined, plans for the thirteenth version have been properly underway. In a prolonged video name with Index, Wieder mentioned his acclimatisation into his new position. Within the context of the Berlin Biennale: “The extent of consideration is definitely completely different”, Wieder stated diplomatically. “The political scenario is heated.” Earlier than Berlin, Wieder had spent ten years in Sweden and Norway, his final submit being the directorship of Bergen Kunsthall.
What duty ought to an establishment just like the Berlin Biennale have for making ready worldwide curators, given the practical expectation of a backlash? Wieder confirmed that he and Colah held common “exchanges on cultural politics”, typically twice every week. What did they speak about? “It was about getting a way for what sure works is perhaps perceived like, what responses they may generate if offered in a technique or one other”, Wieder replied. At different instances, that they had detailed conversations in regards to the implementation and positioning of particular person works. Supposed to protect the biennale as a lot as attainable from assaults, it will appear that they succeeded in defending the curator and its artists from accusations of antisemitism, or of crossing the boundaries of Staatsräson.
For all of the gestures of solidarity with Palestine, deliberate or tried, that in the end didn’t make it into the present, was there something on Palestine on show on the biennale – irrespective of how fugitive this can be, as per its overarching theme? Some critics have discerned subversive gestures all through. In accordance with the artwork journal e-flux: “Because the customer walks by way of the present, a collection of indirect, usually brilliantly conceived references to Palestine accumulate. Collectively, they conspire to make the highly effective declare that the rationale we’re in search of one thing that doesn’t seem is as a result of we already know what’s happening.”
Simon Wachsmuth’s video work, From Heaven Excessive (2025), proven on the former Courthouse, Lehrter Strasse, was cited as a living proof. Over half-hour, it presents the absurd cross-examination, by a choose, of a pig-masked determine in Prussian navy uniform. When requested the place it comes from, the masked determine replies: “From the river, over the mountain, to the ocean.” Wachsmuth conceived the piece as a tribute to Prussian Archangel, a 1920 antimilitaristic Dada work, and the artists who have been tried for defaming the military.
Related references will be learn into a number of different works. Armin Linke’s Negotiation Tables (2025) was prominently on show on the entrance to the KW. Within the work, Linke revisits the 1878 Congress of Berlin, throughout which the particular worldwide standing of Jerusalem was formally acknowledged, a political choice which continues to reverberate to the current day. On the highest ground, massive banners offered particulars of the worldwide arms commerce, together with offers with Israel. The declarative banners have been a part of Gesamtkunstwerk as a Sensible Joke (2025), a site-specific set up by Sawangwongse Yawnghwe, one other artist from Myanmar.
For the biennale’s curators and directors, “fugitive” gestures of solidarity, nonetheless frustratingly futile, have been preferable to nothing. However within the face of Israel’s breathtaking devastation of Gaza, destruction escalating to new ranges week after week, any gesture from the Berlin Biennale would really feel all however inconsequential.
The Palestinian artist who had been approached to exhibit on the biennale informed Index that they didn’t know what internet hosting a biennale in Germany meant proper now. It could really feel hurtful to take part, they stated, because the nation had been straight backing the onslaught on Gaza, by way of navy exports to Israel and its fervent and wide-reaching dedication to Israel’s safety: “By collaborating, I’d be a part of that construction.”
Regardless of the ambitions or intentions of its curators and directors, it seems that they have been coping with numerous boundaries shaping what the biennale might say or show. The institutional framework of the biennale as a state-funded occasion, for one factor, precluded any structural positionality – particularly given the presence of Staatsräson as an overriding precept. Then, there have been the teachings from the documenta and the heated public debate. There have been any variety of causes for artists to decide on to not take part: concern of a polarised public outcry, considerations that the institutional constructions provided inadequate safety towards a political backlash, allegiance with Strike Germany. Self-censorship might have additionally factored into choices to not take part or influenced how sure artworks did or didn’t embrace gestures of pro-Palestinian solidarity.
However even inside these constraints, curators and several other artists did reach smuggling in gestures of solidarity. Wilfully crossing the boundaries, because the final documenta was perceived by many to have performed, would have possible escalated into one more critical confrontation between vested pursuits, probably sparking a stronger drive in direction of the political oversight of latest artwork. As issues stand, the damage-control measures of the Berlin Biennale, regardless that designed to keep away from a documenta-style debacle, ended up leaving artists, curators and lecturers, inside and out of doors Germany, feeling alienated. The pervading sense was that what’s at the moment permissible in Germany’s cultural sector merely isn’t sufficient.
The nameless artist behind the multimedia exhibit informed me that their work had developed out of contexts outlined by scrutiny and surveillance of their dwelling nation. In Germany, those self same pressures utilized: “Berlin, the artwork capital of the world isn’t any completely different on this respect. The curator’s idea tragically succeeds in exposing the situation of scrutiny of the biennale. The present was left to rely on what we as artists creatively categorical or don’t. Coming underneath such strain is a danger in all probability not all artists might take.”
The thirteenth Berlin Biennale closed on 14 September 2025.
