Zasha Colah, Marita Muukkonen, Selma Selman, Valentina Viviani

Moderated by Timea Junghaus

If art exists, most explicitly, in moments of crisis and catastrophe—as is attested by artists of the 13th Berlin Biennale and its Sister Organizations—what are its languages and preoccupations? What does it leave to us as viewers, spectators, audience, receivers, and is it what we expect, or can even understand fully in the present?

In an era where crisis has become the status quo, what is the role of art when survival itself is at stake? This conversation invites thinkers, artists, and curators to explore how art functions as a site of resistance, a space for critical imagination, and as cultural evidence—the artistic action, its orality, and forms of transmission, recognized as a fundamental part of history and world making.

As financial markets trade in cultural capital and institutions buckle under the weight of political instrumentalization, we ask: Does art still possess the radical potential to repair, to challenge, to propose new futures? Which are the artistic claims of our times?

The panel will draw from historical moments when art redefined itself in response to catastrophe—from avant-garde movements born from the rubble of war to contemporary interventions emerging from zones of displacement. This conversation will not seek definitive answers, but rather provoke a rethinking of the possibilities of art in the present moment, in a time when uncertainty is our only certainty.

Marita Muukkonen is a curator as well as co-founder and director of Perpetuum Mobile (PM), the non-profit organization running the international NGOs Artists at Risk (AR) and Ecologists at Risk (ER). She curates internationally, has served as curator at FRAME – Contemporary Art Finland; editor of FRAMEWORK – The Finnish Art Review; Chairperson of the Helsinki International Artists-in-Residence Programme (HIAP), and held key functions at the Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art (NIFCA). 

Selma Selman is a visual and performance artist from Bosnia and Herzegovina of Romani origin. Her multidisciplinary practice includes performance, video, painting, and installation, often rooted in autobiographical narratives that confront social injustice, gender-based violence, and systemic discrimination. In her ongoing performance Motherboards (2023–ongoing) Selman, alongside her family members, dismantles electronic waste to extract precious metals—a process that deconstructs racialized and reductive narratives while offering tangible insights into power and sustainability. Her works have been exhibited at documenta fifteen, the Venice Biennale (FutuRoma Pavilion), Autostrada Biennale, Gropius Bau, Schirn Kunsthalle, Istanbul Biennial. Selman is also the founder of the educational initiative Get the Heck to School, which supports Roma girls facing poverty and marginalisation. 

Timea Junghaus is an art historian, curator, and a leading voice of the Roma cultural and political movement. As Executive Director of the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC) in Berlin, she has forged an unprecedented institutional platform for Roma creative expression. Her research and curatorial practice interrogate modern and contemporary art through critical theory, with particular attention to cultural difference, coloniality, and minority representation. Junghaus’s curatorial achievements include the First Roma Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007); the visual art section of RomArchive (2017); the prefigurative institution RomaMoMA (2005-present); the Roma contributions at Manifesta 14 (2022) and documenta fifteen (2022); and the Milan Triennale (2022).