The 13th Berlin Biennale begins: with delay – and great political clout

Just over a month after Berlin's last major art event – ​​Gallery Weekend in early May – the action is back in full swing. The 13th Berlin Biennale finally kicks off this Friday evening, after the biennial event was postponed to 2023 for flimsy reasons ("pandemic-related delay" in 2023?).

During Gallery Weekend, observers were surprised by how unpolitical all the art on display was, given the wars and crises, the total madness of the current world. Doesn't art want to reflect this? Are artists really as fearful as has often been claimed recently? This is certainly no longer the case in June. The 13th edition is poised to be the most political since its inception in 1998. Indian curator Zasha Colah has put together a program featuring 60 works by artists from 40 countries.

Most of them are little known; many have no gallery representation, a few are said to have been in prison for political reasons, and some don't know if they will be able to return to their home countries because of Trump's new immigration regulations and the controversial themes and motifs of their art. Names that might ring a bell for insiders include British film director and artist Steve McQueen, Armin Linke, Berlin artist Luzie Meyer, and Burmese dissidents Htein Lin and Chaw Ei Thein. There are works by the GDR "Erfurt Women Artists Group" and Hannah Höch, who cultivated forbidden plants on the outskirts of Berlin during the Nazi era.

The curator places violence, militarization, and arbitrary justice at the center of her exhibition. Zasha Colah told the Berliner Zeitung in advance that the biennial focuses on artists who, in Myanmar and elsewhere, have found new forms of protest through oppression and perfected an artistic language over decades. "I was interested in how people in oppressive systems send new messages." She is interested in forms of civil disobedience, which she includes humor in.

The emblem of this biennial: The Joker. And the fox . It was encounters with foxes, these increasingly native animals in Berlin, that led curator Zasha Colah to coin the term "foxing," a technique of tricking, outwitting, and camouflage. This year's exhibition venues include the Hamburger Bahnhof, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, the Sophiensæle, and a former courthouse on Lehrter Straße in Berlin-Moabit.

Berlin Biennale: Political sounds can also fade away quietly

This issue could mark an interesting shift from the recently dominated and partly empty discussion of identity politics and postcolonial particular conflicts within democratic systems in the US or Germany to what happens in unjust states and dictatorships, what censorship means there, for example, and what possible artistic guerrilla tactics and exercises might counteract it. In this way, we can learn new forms of resistance that are urgently needed?

The 4th Berlin Biennale in 2006, curated by Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni, and Ali Subotnick, is considered by many to be the best edition to date, with its memorable, hidden locations in Mitte and its romantic atmosphere. The artist list was full of grandeur, with many distinguished names. Most recently, the 2016 edition by the New York art-newcomer collective DIS caused a very positive stir and gave a platform to a whole new generation of artists. Kader Attia's last edition already had a strongly political tone, but it faded rather quietly. Perhaps this Berlin Biennale will once again provide food for thought after a few less memorable editions. It certainly raises real questions about the madness of our times.

13th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art , 14 June to 14 September 2025