sister organizations

Highlighting independent institutions as incubators for artistic innovation in Berlin, the 13th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art has forged sisterhoods with cultural spaces deeply rooted in the city.

Sections of the 13th Berlin Biennale’s program have been hosted and organized in curatorial complicity with four sister organizations— the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC), the Filmrauschpalast Moabit in the Kulturfabrik, SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA, and the Sophiensæle.

Go to calendar

Each organization offers their own particular dynamics, communities, and cultural lan- guages. Working from the complicity of foxing the city and its cultural scene, they present artworks, films, and events that expand the imaginative grounds of the Berlin Biennale, enacting fugitivity through their own interpretations and intuitions.

ERIAC – European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture

The European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture will present a program curated by Timea Junghaus entitled HOLDING GROUND: Crafting New Paths in a Changing World, which “reflects on resilience and survival not as passive endurance but as active, generative forces: the capacity to repair, to forge new pathways, and to reclaim spaces that have been denied.” It includes Finnish-born artist Katariina Lillqvist’s film series Mire Bala Kale Hin (1999–2002), which, through puppetry, proposes an alternative historiography of the Roma people and their connection to the land—where the past is not merely survived, but actively reimagined within the rhythms of nature. The UK-based Roma artist Dan Turner similarly seeks to reframe nature, not as an untouched ideal but as a site of resilience cultivated through care and rewilding.

He prepares first aid kits that draw upon the skill and knowledge of plants acquired by Roma communities over generations. HOLDING GROUND further features street interventions by Roma artist Lali Gabor, repairing the scars of the urban neglect through coppersmithing. Gabor reclaims the urban space through the intimate scale of the handmade, by forging and mending broken metal objects—an ancestral practice of Roma artisans. His birdhouses at ERIAC and the KW Institute for Contemporary Art gardens extend this gesture of refuge, as a reminder that even the smallest acts of care can restore dignity to our public spaces.

Address
ERIAC – European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture
Reinhardtstr. 41-43
10117 Berlin

Filmrauschpalast Moabit

The second sister organization is Filmrauschpalast Moabit, located at the Kul- turfabrik since 1991. It is the only continuously operating cinema in Moabit and has been exclusively volunteer-run since 1996. The program promotes local film culture and develops special projects focused on offbeat genre films. Filmrauschpalast’s open-air cinema will screen the comedy Watermelon Man (1970, director: Melvin Van Peebles) during the Berlin Biennale.

Address
Filmrauschpalast Moabit
Lehrter Straße 35
10557 Berlin

SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA

SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA, our sister organization in Wedding, takes its name and direction from Erol Yıldız’s concept of transtopia: spaces where transnational connections intersect, are reshaped, and seep into everyday life. Through film culture, the initiative links geographies both near and far, considering their narratives, pasts, presents, and futures. Closely tied to Berlin Biennale’s concept of fugitivity, co- directors Malve Lippmann and Can Sungu curate a film program entitled Outfoxing the Gaze: The Politics of Seeing. The series aims to explore the politics of images, the ethics of filmmaking, and the power dynamics embedded in film history and pro- duction. Using humor, subtlety, and critical reflection, the selected films disrupt conventional storytelling, expose exploitative practices, and reclaim marginalized narratives, turning cinema into a space of resistance and liberation.

Address
SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA
Lindower Str. 20/22, Haus C
13347 Berlin

Sophiensæle

In addition to being a venue of the 13th Berlin Biennale, Sophiensæle presents the works of five additional artists parallel to the biennial. Oliver Zahn’s Crowd Control (2025) explores the performative history of riot police. Visualized as a collec- tive body of eight performers, it highlights the extreme theatricality of police units aimed at controlling crowds, protests, or riots. Berlin-based artist Simone Dede Ayivi explores questions of representation and resistance by amplifying the voices of marginalized communities. Her new work Hä? delves into notions of understanding and misunderstanding in a migration society. Carbon Negative (2025), a performance by Flinn Works, investigates environmental protection and the climate crisis, as well as the questionable global phenomenon of carbon trading as a means to offset human-made emissions. In MONGA (2024), the Brazilian artist Jéssica Teixeira continues her investigation into the politics of the body on stage. Drawing on personal and historical references, Teixeira weaves a powerful solo. Berlin-based choreographer, dancer, and performer Boglárka Börcsök and the artist-filmmaker Andreas Bolm explore the provocative-grotesque legacy of the German Dada artist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. They seek to transform resistance to patri- archal art historiography into a sensual experience. Artist Ceylan Öztrük uses dis- orientation as means of engaging and realigning the relationship between bodies and constructed spaces. Her new work focuses on the mindscape as a territory to explore this relationship in which inner states of being assert themselves and shift between the constructed and the instinctive.

Address
Sophiensæle
Sophienstraße 18
10178 Berlin