Palästina zwischen Augen is an exhibition and public programme bringing together film and video, installation, sound, photography and drawing. It invites us to question and widen the ways we have learned to see, and with them the stories we tell about ourselves.

The curators describe the exhibition as follows: “Palästina zwischen Augen examines the social structures that shape how we perceive, and how these structures determine whose humanity becomes visible, recognizable and worthy of empathy.
Despite the overwhelming availability of visual evidence, testimony and live-streamed footage from Gaza and the wider region, the acknowledgment that these document a genocide is broadly withheld in dominant German discourse. This refusal is sustained by a normalized disavowal of Palestinian subjectivity. The exhibition asks how this is possible.
Palästina zwischen Augen intervenes in the realm of perception. It brings together artistic practices that confront racial hierarchies and the criminalization of solidarity with Palestine; trace continuities of coloniality through public and family archives; address Palestinian diaspora and histories of solidarity with Palestinian liberation in the GDR; reclaim narratives of destruction from within erased lifeworlds; and draw on collective perseverance and anticolonial internationalism as forms of resistance.
Palästina zwischen Augen insists on the necessity of a public space in which we can question the limits placed on our gaze — and reassemble, together, as a collective sensorium.”

Artists: Mohamed Abusal, Shiva Addanki, Basma al-Sharif, Sophie Ataya, Yuval Carasso, Pary El-Qalqili, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Dirar Kalash, Talya Lubinsky, Jumana Manna, Stellar Meris, Joshua Schwebel

Curators: Hannah Beilharz (until July 2026), Yuval Carasso, Talya Lubinsky, Joshua Schwebel, Gabriela Manda Seith

FAQs

How did this exhibition come about?
Since 1969, the nGbK has been a place where artists and curators regularly invite the public to discuss issues affecting local society. Berlin is home to Europe’s largest Palestinian community. Their family histories and biographies are part of the city, but these stories are rarely told. In 2025, Palästina zwischen Augen was voted onto the year’s program at the nGbK in order to make this lack of public perception the subject of an exhibition. The choice of this project thus reflects a need to speak about questions concerning Palestine.

Did discussions take place within the nGbK about the contents of the exhibition?
Debates on the content of exhibitions are a normal part of the nGbK’s internal culture. So there were also discussions about Palästina zwischen Augen that reflect the organization’s many voices. What unites the members of the nGbK is six decades of approaching social issues using artistic means.

Do the positions of the artists and curators correspond to the position of the nGbK?
The content and discourse of exhibitions at the nGbK never corresponds to the views of all members. The nGbK understands itself as a place for encounters and discussions where questions of our time are debated, sometimes controversially. These debates are governed by the code of conduct laid down by the nGbK in the preamble to its statutes.

Why is the nGbK showing this exhibition?
Over time, the structure of the nGbK has often provided a platform for urban movements that are not heard elsewhere. It fosters free curatorial activity that allows ongoing social conflicts to be publicly communicated in the form of art and culture. With more than a thousand members, the nGbK mirrors Berlin’s independent art scene like no other institution. The choice of Palästina zwischen Augen thus also expresses an endeavor within Berlin’s post-migrant society to facilitate a forum in which Palestinian, Jewish and other diasporic voices speak for themselves.

What can an exhibition contribute to debates around Israel and Palestine?
With its capacity for abstraction and nuance, contemporary art can provide an aesthetic experience of lived biographies and make it possible to shape society. Subjectivity in particular contributes to an expanded understanding of many-voiced togetherness. This exhibition is less about Palestine itself than about the perception of Palestine in Germany. It asks how certain perceptions are cultivated and what remains invisible and unacknowledged.

What is meant by the „not-seeing“ of Palestine?
The curatorial concept of the exhibition and its program of accompanying events are based on the assumption that the way we read images is shaped by presuppositions and visual habits. In Germany, this means that Palestine and the experiences of Palestinians are often perceived either not at all or only in distorted form. The exhibition seeks to work against this.

I would like to know more about what’s behind the exhibition. Is there a possibility for conversations with the curators?
During the exhibition, the curators will propose regular discussion formats to facilitate exchanges with the public.

Dates:
Saturday, October 17, 5 pm
Wednesday, November 18, 5 pm
Saturday, December 5, 5 pm