Titled passing the fugitive on, the 13th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art opens on June 13, 2025. Theinternational exhibition brings together over 60 artists and presents more than 170 works that open windows into a range of geographical contexts across four venues: KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Sophiens.le, Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, and a former Courthouse on Lehrter Stra.e in Berlin-Moabit.
With the exhibition title, Zasha Colah, the curator of the 13th Berlin Biennale, references art’s ability to define its own laws in the face of lawful violence in unjust systems and to assert itself even under conditions of persecution and militarization—sending messages that can be passed on. passing the fugitive on can thus be understood as a call to action or an instruction piece: visitors are called upon to become fugitive themselves, to spread the content of the works from mouth to mouth, until it can materialize. The exhibition is premised on that unpredictable moment when an act of individual imagination may become collective.
The title of the 13th Berlin Biennale refers to the aesthetic character of the works on view, which incorporate fugitive forms of transmission and materialization, engaging the body and orality. When the works of art speak directly—in moments of theatrical stagings, performances, reading groups, scientific lectures, tribunals, spoken-word and collective commemorative walks in the city to small enacted jokes or stand-up comedy—a sense of immediate complicity emerges between artwork and audience.
Press release from The Berlin Biennale
Image: Fredj Moussa. لاد البربر (Land of Barbar). 2025. Video still © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025
