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“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, 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.
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
