12 th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art

11 June – 18 September 2022

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The Curator

Kader Attia as curator

The curator of the 12th Berlin Biennale is Kader Attia. The French installation artist and photographer 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.

Quote Kader Attia

I am often asked: What comes after decolonial thinking?
Frankly, I’m less concerned with what comes after than with the fact that it is an ongoing conversation in the here and now, a series of acts of repair taking place in different spheres of society.

Kader Attia

Project description

Curator Kader Attia will develope the decolonial concept of the 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art in close collaboration with an artistic team, including the Berlin-based writer and cultural theorist Ana Teixeira Pinto, the independent curator, art researcher, writer and translator Đỗ Tường Linh, based in Hanoi, the Dakar-based curator Marie Helene Pereira, the curator and researcher Noam Segal from Brooklyn, NY as well as the researcher, writer, and curator Rasha Salti, living and working in Beirut and Berlin. Through the lenses of their diverse backgrounds and critical practices they will contribute their unique perspectives to the project’s concept.

Decolonization of art

Recognizing art as a special form of repair, the 12th Berlin Biennale unfolds around a set of questions. How can the decolonization of art be conceived—from the restitution of plundered goods to an anticolonial culture of memory? What role can non-Western feminist movements play in the reappropriation of history and identity? How are climate crisis and colonialism related? How can resource extraction be resisted and native knowledges acknowledged to preserve ecosystems?

With exhibitions, interventions, and events, the 12th Berlin Biennale will span diverse venues in the city, offering a discursive space that bridges different fields of knowledge production. From June 11 to September 18, 2022 a polyphonic debate unfolds, convening artists, scholars, and activists to map the world with its ruptures and contradictions, create counter-trajectories to the colonial narrative, and collaboratively shape new forms of agency for the future.

BB12 Curators Workshop

On the occasion of the 12th Berlin Biennale (11.6.–18.11.2022), curator Kader Attia has invited Reem Shadid to develop and reimagine the format of the Curators Workshop. Following a series of successful theme-based workshops held in conjunction with the 4th to 11th editions of the Berlin Biennale, this iteration—drawing on Attia’s decolonial concept for the 12th Berlin Biennale and its thematic areas—addresses pressing questions about how to place artistic practice at the heart of what we do. Invited participants will have the opportunity to discuss these topics in close collaboration with curators, speakers, Berlin Biennale staff, and invited contributors. In collaboration with the Allianz Kulturstiftung, BMW Group, Goethe-Institut e. V., and Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa), the Berlin Biennale invites a group of eight to twelve early- career curators, educators, and other practitioners to participate in a ten-day workshop. The BB12 Curators Workshop: It Speaks to Me (external link, opens in a new window) takes language as a departure point and invites its participants to consider how curatorial practice can reappropriate language that has been sequestered and used against us, in order to contribute to the emergence and redesignation of spaces so that other types of mediations, translations, and encounters may take place.

Application Deadline: 31 Jan. 2022
Workshop: 4. Jul. –10. Jul. 2022

The Berlin Biennale

The Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art takes place every two years at varying locations in Berlin and is defined by the differing concepts of its renowned curators. It promotes experimental formats and provides the appointed curators the space and freedom to present the latest relevant and challenging positions independent of the art market and collection interests.

Each edition brings together artists, theorists, and practitioners from different fields to let them enter into a dialogue with the city of Berlin and its public. The German capital is continuously under change thus remaining fragmented, diverse, and contradictory. The Berlin Biennale explores artistic developments to present the unseen and the unfamiliar against the backdrop of this stimulating atmosphere. Participation in the exhibition has contributed to numerous young artists achieving international status.

The Berlin Biennale is organised by KUNST-WERKE BERLIN e.V.

The Federal Cultural Foundation, which has supported the Berlin Biennale since its fourth edition in 2006 as one of Germany's "top cultural institutions", continued its long-standing partnership with the Berlin Biennale for the 12th edition as main sponsor.

Events

No upcoming events at present

Previous events

  • 11 June, 2022 to 18 September, 2022: 12th Berlin Biennale for contemporary art

    various venues, Berlin

Contact

Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art

Auguststraße 69
D-10117 Berlin
Tel +49 (0)30 - 24 34 59 - 0
Fax +49 (0)30 - 24 34 59 - 99
office​(at)​berlinbiennale.de

Pressekontakt:
press​(at)​berlinbiennale.de
T +49 30 243459-42

Website:
12.berlinbiennale.de (external link, opens in a new window)