Kyiv Perennial
February 23–June 9, 2024, Berlin
nGbK am Alex, station urbaner kulturen/nGbK Hellersdorf, Between Bridges, Prater Galerie
Free admission to all locations and events.

Press conference
February 23, 2024, 11 am
nGbK am Alex, Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 11/13, 10178 Berlin, access via escalator
With a tour of the exhibition. Followed by tours of the exhibitions at Between Bridges and station urbaner kulturen/nGbK Hellersdorf. Transfer via shuttle bus.
Please register at presse@ngbk.de

Kyiv Perennial opens in Berlin from February 23–25, 2024, symbolically marking the 10th anniversary of the Maidan Revolution and the 10th year of the Russian war against Ukraine. It is a continuation of the pan-European edition of the Kyiv Biennial 2023, which took place in several Ukrainian and EU cities. The Berlin edition is funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation) in a cooperation. A multi-part exhibition and an extensive program of events span four venues: nGbK’s two locations on Alexanderplatz and in Hellersdorf, Between Bridges, and Prater Galerie.

The public program begins ahead of the opening with a keynote by historian Timothy Snyder on Friday, February 16, at nGbK am Alex.

The exhibition commences the following week with a three-day opening weekend: On Friday, February 23, Kyiv Perennial opens at nGbK am Alex. Ukrainian musician Heinali will perform tracks from his latest album KYIV ETERNAL. On Saturday, February 24, the second part of the exhibition opens at Between Bridges, and on Sunday, February 25, the third part opens at nGbK’s Hellersdorf location, station urbaner kulturen, with presentations by Leon Kahane and Christina Werner. The fourth part of the exhibition is organized by Prater Galerie and opens in June 2024.

A discursive program with weekly events accompanies the exhibition throughout March and April. On February 29, The Reckoning Project, an initiative by international and Ukrainian reporters, analysts, and researchers, presents its documentation of Russian war crimes based on verified witness testimonies.

On March 9, almost to the day two years after the Russian airstrike on the Mariupol Drama Theater, one of the worst atrocities committed by Russia during the current war, the Center for Spatial Technologies introduces its work A Сity Within a Building, presenting it in its entirety for the first time after two years of research. Through hours of interviews with survivors of the attack, the joint research project with the Berlin-based group Forensis reassembles the living world of the theater, where more than 1,000 people had sought refuge at the time of the bombing.

On March 16, a panel discussion with literary scholar Epp Annus, historian Franziska Davies, and researcher Darya Tsymbalyuk reverses the discourse of decolonization from the West towards Europe’s East with an eye on decolonization processes in Ukraine and the Baltic states. In another panel on March 23, researcher and curator Kateryna Iakovlenko, writer Yassin al-Haj Saleh, and historian Jan Tomasz Gross share perspectives on recurring experiences of displacement, from World War II to the war in Syria and Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Accompanying the exhibition and public program, a poster project draws attention to Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and contextualizes it as a war within and against Europe. The artists Pavel Brăila, Uliana Bychenkova, Experimental Jetset, Marina Naprushkina, Aliona Solomadina, and Wolfgang Tillmans were invited to create one poster each with the leading question: What will happen to Europe if the war against Ukraine continues for ten more years? Half of the print-run of the posters will be flyposted in Berlin and the other half will be available for free at the different locations of Kyiv Perennial.

About the exhibition

Kyiv Perennial interprets the idea of the biennial as a collective, long-term endeavor against the backdrop of survival – politically, socially, and culturally: “Perennial” means “lasting”, “enduring”, or “persisting”. Through presenting artistic and discursive practices, Kyiv Perennial addresses the multi-layered realities of war. The contributions engage and examine a wide-ranging spectrum of urgent themes, including war trauma, flight and displacement, the social and political polarization in European societies, ecological destruction caused by military conflict, and decolonial tendencies in contemporary Eastern European culture and politics.

Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine has given rise to a new wave of investigative, research-based, and documentary approaches deployed by artists, activists, and journalists. Their works have amounted to a collection of evidence of war crimes that reach from the killing of civilians and the erasure of architectural and other cultural heritage to environmental destruction that will affect Ukrainians until long after the end of the war. In addition to presenting these, Kyiv Perennial will put back into focus the Russian invasion of the Donbas region, the history of the Crimean Tatars, and German war crimes on Ukrainian soil during World War II. Going beyond a mere reckoning with the past, the exhibition orients itself towards the future, seeking possible exit strategies from the current deadlock of war, authoritarianism, and colonialism.

Artists: Anonymous, Zuzanna Czebatul, De Ne De, Dmytro Hreshko, Nikita Kadan, Leon Kahane, Roman Khimey and Yarema Malashchuk, Yana Kononova, Daria Kozlova and Arwina Afsharnejad, The Reckoning Project, Vladyslav Riaboshtan, Mykola Ridnyi, Anna Scherbyna and Christina Werner, Anton Shebetko

Poster project with Pavel Brăila, Uliana Bychenkova, Experimental Jetset, Marina Naprushkina, Aliona Solomadina, Wolfgang Tillmans

Artistic Director: Vasyl Cherepanyn

Curatorial team: Jörg Heiser, Serge Klymko, Constanze Musterer, Viktor Neumann, Lena Prents, Can Mileva Rastovic, Wolfgang Tillmans, Shahin Zarinbal

Public program

Friday, February 16, 6 pm, nGbK am Alex (Stadtwerkstatt)
Wonder Woman and the Orcs: Ukrainian History and Western Fables
Keynote by Timothy Snyder
In English with simultaneous translation into German

Friday, February 23, 6 pm, nGbK am Alex
Exhibition opening
with the musical performance KYIV ETERNAL by Heinali (8 pm)

Saturday, February 24, 6 pm, Between Bridges
Exhibition opening

Sunday, February 25, 4 pm, station urbaner kulturen/nGbK Hellersdorf
Exhibition opening
with presentations by Christina Werner and Leon Kahane
In German

Thursday, February 29, 7 pm, nGbK am Alex
The Reckoning Project: Ukraine Testifies
Presentation by Nataliya Gumenyuk, Lyuba Knorozok, and Raji Abdul Salam accompanied with a screening of the film CHORNOBYL 22 (21 min.) by Oleksiy Radynski
In English with simultaneous translation into German

Saturday, March 9, 5 pm, nGbK am Alex
A Сity Within a Building: The Russian Airstrike on the Mariupol Drama Theater
Presentation by the Center for Spatial Technologies with Maksym Rokmaniiko, Svitlana Matviyenko, Kseniia Rybak, and Isabelle Haßfurther
In English with simultaneous translation into German

Saturday, March 16, 5 pm, Between Bridges
Decolonizing Eastern Europe
Panel discussion with Epp Annus, Franziska Davies, and Darya Tsymbalyuk
In English

Saturday, March 23, 5 pm, nGbK am Alex
Displacement and Refuge in Times of War
Panel discussion with Kateryna Iakovlenko, Yassin al-Haj Saleh, and Jan Tomasz Gross
In English with simultaneous translation into German

Saturday, April 6, 5 pm, Between Bridges
In Defense of Anonymous Authors – On the Role of the Witness in the Blurred Reality of a Warzone
Presentation by Yuriy Hrytsyna
In English

Saturday, April 13, 5 pm, Between Bridges
Queer Fighters of Ukraine
Screening and talk by Angelika Ustymenko and Alex King
In English

Saturday, April 20, 5 pm, nGbK am Alex
Why (This) War? Psychoanalysis of War – Psychoanalysis in War
Panel discussion with Yurko Prokhasko, Phil Langer, Beatrice Patsalides Hofmann, and Marcus Coelen
In English

Friday, April 26, 7 pm, nGbK am Alex
Infinity According to Florian
Screening and talk by Oleksiy Radynski
In English

Saturday, April 27, 5 pm, nGbK am Alex
Love and Know Your Native Land
Presentation by the De Ne De artistic initiative with Yevheniia Moliar, Liubov Malikova, Nataliya Diachenko, and Vova Vorotniov
In English

Sunday, April 28, 5 pm, Between Bridges
The Kharkiv Trilogy
Screening and talk by Mykola Ridnyi
In English

Saturday, June 1, 11 am–6.30 pm,  nGbK am Alex (Stadtwerkstatt)
What’s Left of the Friendship of Nations?
Prater Galerie symposium curated by Lena Prents and Antonina Stebur
In English and German with simultaneous translation

Locations

nGbK am Alex
Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 11/13, 10178 Berlin (access via escalator)
Feb 24–Apr 1, 2024
Opening: Feb 23, 2024, 6 pm
Opening hours: Tue–Sun 12–6 pm, Fri 12–8 pm

station urbaner kulturen/nGbK Hellersdorf
Auerbacher Ring 41, 12619 Berlin (entrance on Kastanienboulevard)
Feb 26–Jun 9, 2024
Opening: Feb 25, 2024, 4 pm
Opening hours: Thu and Sat 3–7 pm

Between Bridges
Adalbertstraße 43, 10179 Berlin
Feb 25–May 5, 2024
Opening: Feb 24, 2024, 6 pm
Opening hours: Wed–Sat 12–6 pm
Gallery Weekend, Apr 26—28, 2024, 11—7 pm

Prater Galerie
From June 2024
Details on locations and dates will be announced shortly on pratergalerie.de
Symposium: June 1, 2024

The project is a cooperation between the Visual Culture Research Center, neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst and the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation), together with Between Bridges and the communal Prater Galerie. The Kulturstiftung des Bundes is funded by the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media).

In partnership with: Emergency Support Initiative, Documenting Ukraine Program at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) Vienna, Institute for East European Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin, Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine, The Reckoning Project, Ukrainian Institute in Germany.

Press contact:
Lutz Breitinger
neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst
Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 11/13, 10178 Berlin
Tel. 030-616 513 13
presse@ngbk.de
ngbk.de