Category: Allgemein

Hauntings

Exhibition

Furore
Nina Paszkowski
5/6/2026 – 21/02/2027
Opening: 4/6/2026, from 6 PM

The solo exhibition by Nina Paszkowski, titled “Furore”, refers to the spectacle that has long shaped the Bärenzwinger: the principle of display and staging—whether through living animals, ideologically charged urban identity, or contemporary art. “Furore” describes a form of public attention that moves between fascination and unease. What attracts and excites can also turn into indignation or anger. Paszkowski approaches this anger through mythological figures whose name resonates in the exhibition title: the Furies. In Greek mythology, they appear as furious avengers who, through an act of mercy, undergo a process of becoming human and transform into the benevolent Eumenides.

In “Furore”, the Furies appear as larger-than-life guardians. Against the backdrop of the site’s history—where spectacle has long been intertwined with control and violence—it remains uncertain whether they will enact revenge or grant mercy here. In Paszkowski’s work, anger does not remain confined to destruction. Instead, it appears as a force capable of breaking open existing conditions and making new forms of coexistence imaginable. The transformation of the Furies is mirrored in a changing constellation of works within the Bärenzwinger itself: over the nine-month duration of the exhibition, anger erupts from the walls of the former bear enclosure in the form of ceramic proliferations, carving out new paths. What remains are open wounds that inscribe vulnerability into the space and raise questions about the persistence of violence and the possibility of healing.

Curated by Janine Pauleck, Annika Reketat and Tina Quednau

Artistic program

Akt 1
For staying is nowhere.
June 12–14, 2026

Akt 2
Does the cosmic space,
we dissolve into, taste of us then?
August 7–9, 2026

Akt 3
Nowhere will world be, but within.
October 16–18, 2026

Loosely drawing on Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies (1922), the artistic program of the Bärenzwinger unfolds in a four-part dramaturgy between 15 May and 18 October. Written over the course of ten years, Rilke’s cycle of elegies traces a movement of searching that begins with an invocation of places, people, and things from the past, and gradually leads to the question of how to engage with what is missing. Within the tension between conservation and transformation, the Bärenzwinger monument becomes both setting and stage for an artistic exploration of how loss might be approached in the face of an uncertain future.

Rilke’s response is not a resolution but a movement: memories do not survive through preservation alone, but by entering new contexts and changing in the process—thus opening a path for what does not yet exist. While the elegies themselves offer no final closure, the program sets a trajectory toward the tenth anniversary of the Bärenzwinger as a municipal gallery in 2027.

Curated by Luise Haubenreiser, Philipp Hennch, Pauline Kling, Kaya Peters, Nicola Reißer, Niva Sann and Josephine Steffens

Artistic Research Project

Comming in October 2026

The artist Qusay Awad is invited to carry out an artistic research project to delve further into the annual theme Heimsuchungen/Hauntings. In view of the upcoming anniversary year 2027, the research project will aim to examine and reflect on the 10-year exhibition history in relation to the architecture and history of the Bärenzwinger. Throughout the year, interim updates of the research project will be presented and starting in October, the result of the project will be exhibited.

Curated by Alin Daghestani and Hannah van der Est

OPEN CALL 2023

Helin Ulas and Sarah Oh-Mock have been selected by the jury and will present their artistic works at Bärenzwinger.

In this year’s program of Bärenzwinger we will be dedicating four exihibitions to the theme of gleaning. We understand gleaning not only as the practice of collecting overlooked or leftover crops, but rather as the general practice of reviewing and re-evaluating the (supposedly) functionless and unusable. It is a semiotic process that deciphers the in parts only implicit conditions of our environment and that enables a literal examination of the modalities of our humanity. It thus also always puts norms, self-evident facts and seemingly necessary things up for disposition and tests their binding nature.

In the autumn exhibition, we therefore turn our attention to the scene of simulation: the digital world. That is, even more than focusing on the digital world, we are using the optics of simulation to make things visible that under the regime of the digitalisation of our realities is increasingly being pushed into the shadows, ignored or rendered functionless. The exhibition aims to investigate the question of how the human being has changed and will have changed under technological developments, and thus implicitly which qualities are unalterably part of being human, in that they resist the transformations of technology or cause a disruption of the matrix through their absence in the “onlife”. However, this is a gleaning that favours the viewpoint of the future, and from this viewpoint of the future asks about its plural pasts – our often seemingly monolithic present. The present is thus experienced less as a factual necessity than as a space of possibility. In this respect, our exhibition program not only asks what human beings are, but also what they can be.

As the premise of Bärenzwinger is being a former animal enclosure and not a white cube, the project proposal should also always be considered against the background of the specific symbolism of the place and space. For first impressions klick here.

Artists are warmly invited to submit a specific project proposal! From the applications two individual projects will be selected.

Practical Information

Schedule:

  • Open Call: 10.03.-30.04.23
  • Selection of Artists: 01.05.-31.05.23
  • Announcement of selection: Beginning of June
  • Kick-Off: 12.06.
  • Exhibition period: 17.08.-29.10.23

Who can apply?

  • Professional artists (completed training) resident in Berlin, designers, collectives.

Working materials and support

  • The work production is financed with up to 625 euros per artistic position. Our team supports the projects with transport, a set-up team, press work and visitor service.

Exhibition space

  • Bärenzwinger as a building and its two outdoors terraces.

Fees

  • Artist or collective fee of 2,500 euros (per artistic position).

The following must be submitted for the application (in one pdf document):

  • Project proposal (max. one DIN A4 page)
  • Technical requirements (max. one DIN A4 page)
  • Portfolio with max. 10 pages incl. Pictures
  • CV

Curation

  • Joana Stamer, Julius Kaftan

Jury

  • Team Artistic Direction Bärenzwinger.

Questions and application:

opencall@baerenzwinger.berlin