Kyiv Biennial A Bird That Cannot Land
Abdullah Miniawy, Adam Hanieh, Alona Karavai, Anna Ehrenstein, 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, Hiwa K, Ihor Tsymbrovsky, Ivan Krastev, Joyce Joumaa, Julia Cimafiejeva, Katarína 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 Šärifullá and Ziliä Qansurá, Seyyare – Anatolian Women’s Choir, Stefaniia Bodnia and Jack Dove, Tjan Zaotschnaja, Tolia Astakhishvili, Ulrike Herrmann, Wafaa Saied
KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Auguststraße 69, Berlin, Berlin 10117
Wed – Mon, 11:00–19:00 Closed on Tuesdays
Admission
Free Admission
Free Admission on certain days
About
"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.