What’s Gripping at the 2025 Berlin Biennale?
14 June–14 September 2025 Both a call to action and an instruction piece, the 13th edition of the Berlin Biennale explores how art can subvert systems and define its own laws. Save to My OculaStill one of Europe’s most vital platforms for experimental, politically engaged art, the Berlin Biennale’s 13th edition unfolds across four venues from 14 June to 14 September 2025.
Curated by Zasha Colah, known for her work on artistic practices in zones of conflict, with Valentina Viviani as assistant curator, the Biennale brings together over 60 artists and more than 170 works under the title passing the fugitive on.
The programme explores how art can subvert systems of violence, law, and displacement—favouring performance, orality, and embodied knowledge over traditional display formats.
Highlights include Etcétera’s LIBERATE MARS (2025), a campaign challenging neoliberal exploitation of Indigenous lands and imaginaries; Sarnath Banerjee’s Critical Imagination Deficit (2025), a multimedia installation using newspaper kiosk structures to critique waning Euro-American intellectual authority; and Gernot Wieland’s Family Constellation with a Fox (2025), which weaves psychoanalysis and colonial critique into a study of intergenerational trauma.
A walkable route will link four venues—KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Hamburger Bahnhof, Sophiensæle, and a disused Moabit courthouse, underscoring the Biennale’s focus on the tension between law and resistance.
Explore selected presentations from across the programme.
Main image: Sawangwongse Yawnghwe, Joker's Headquarters. Gesamtkunstwerk as a Practical Joke (C'est le Premier Vol de L'Aigle) [It's the eagle's first flight] (2025). Exhibition view: 13th Berlin Biennale, KW Institute for Contemporary Art (14 June–14 September 2025). Courtesy Sawangwongse Yawnghwe. Photo: Diana Pfammatter; Eike Walkenhorst.
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