Berlin 10117
Germany
Last Sunday, September 14, 2025, the 13th Berlin Biennale drew to a close with over 130,000 visitors. Under the title passing the fugitive on, the exhibition showed over 170 works by more than 60 artists at four venues in Berlin. A majority of these works were commissioned for the Berlin Biennale. The venues included the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, the Sophiensæle, the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, and the former Courthouse Lehrter Straße.
The title of the exhibition alludes to art’s ability to define its own laws in the face of legislative violence in unjust systems, the artist’s capacity for clarity of gesture and action in their own historical condition, and to pass these on.
The 13th Berlin Biennale has grounded the former Courthouse Lehrter Straße as a site for artistic production. This historic building—where Karl Liebknecht was put on trial in 1916—became the setting for works that explored the threshold between Legality, Illegality, and the Artist’s Claim. foxing described the possibility of transforming one’s own adverse circumstances. Under the sections titled Artists’ Street and Moving Multitudes and the Conscience of Art the exhibition focused on the histories of artistic positions rooted in unauthorized, fugitive acts on the street, or those within sit-ins, blockades, and civil disobedience movements, or those never seen in hiding and prisons out of view, to make comparative and intergenerational art histories palpable. Works shown at the Sophiensæle under the title Blueprint of Berlin used three cultural forms infused with restive political energy—the tap dance, the anyeint, and the powada—to engage with the layered history of the building and of Berlin up to the present elections.
This edition of the biennale, developed portions of the program in curatorial co-conspiracy with four sister organizations: the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC), Filmrauschpalast Moabit, SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA, and the Sophiensæle. Many events of the Encounters series took place at Kulturfabrik Moabit.
47 live acts events from the packed and brimful Encounters series to unannounced fugitive acts opened up the exhibition space to immediacy and aesthetic experience, where cultural evidence was passed forward. With Walking the Cabbage in Berlin, Han Bing opened the Encounters program on June 13, 2025, walking a cabbage through the streets of Berlin-Mitte. With The Beggars’ Convention, Major Nom brought a theater performance on the recent civil disobedience movement in Myanmar to Berlin with queer and female-identifying performers in drag. Mila Panić’s stand-up comedy club Big Mouth found continuities between the Bosnian war, Ukraine, and Gaza over six evenings with changing guests.
Two People’s Tribunals—civil society court forums—dealt with human rights violations and crimes against humanity: the Bana Group for Peace and Development held a People’s Tribunal on the Systematic Targeting of Women Activists in Sudan. The People’s Tribunal on Art for Resisting Oppression—Philippines cases, led by ALPAS Pilipinas, the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP)—Germany, and Gabriela Germany, sought justice for the systematic attacks on art and cultural rights. Both tribunals admitted sculpture, orality, and performance as forms of legal evidence. The People’s Tribunals were realized in collaboration with the mediation team as part of the Encounters series.
Margherita Moscardini’s work The Stairway, as well as the historic staircase in the former Courthouse, repeatedly served as sites for fugitive acts throughout the exhibition period. At the end of August, Walking the Silence at Görlitzer Park by the Kashmiri Cabbage Walker—made a bridge to the beginning of the exhibition.
The Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art is organized by KUNST-WERKE BERLIN e. V. The Berlin Biennale is funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation). The Kulturstiftung des Bundes is funded by the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media).
