Handle (with) Care – EN Bärenzwinger Berlin

The spaces we inhabit and encounter each other in are more than just our built environment. They are the result of our actions, decisions, and relationships – and, in turn, shape how and where we experience care, connection or exclusion and control. “Relations in Place” explores spaces as networks of relationships where social, political, and cultural tensions manifest.

Set against the historically charged backdrop of the former bear pit in the heart of Berlin, the exhibition focuses on the ambivalences of spatial practices: How and where are care and attention as well as power and control negotiated in space? What dynamics leave their marks on the architecture and use of space? The works on display engage with these questions across different spatial layers: from the transnational perspective of the diaspora through the urban landscape of Berlin to the specific context of the Bärenzwinger itself.

Vanessa Amoah Opoku & Joy Weinberger address belonging, responsibility and home within the diaspora. How can a home be built across borders and generations – particularly in the face of neo-colonial land dispossession? Özcan Ertek transforms the Bärenzwinger into a resonant space using soundscapes recorded in Berlin, in which visitors are invited to navigate between proximity and distance, control and autonomy. Zhenru Liang marks the threshold between cage and garden with an architecture of loosely stacked bricks, referencing the Bärenzwinger’s complex history as a place of confinement and encounter.

Sound Intervention “Acoustic Horizon” by Özcan Ertek:

This performance expands Özcan Ertek’s ongoing project “Acoustic Horizon”, which involves a rotating, funnel-shaped speaker responding to its acoustic and architectural environment. For the opening of “Relations in Place” at the Bärenzwinger, a site-specific version of the work will be created. The funnel will be live-activated, engaging in a dialogue with the space. The piece reflects the tensions between proximity and distance, body and space, autonomy and control, and invites visitors to reconsider their position within the social and spatial dynamics of the city.

Mapping Care around Bärenzwinger: What Space Does Care Take in the City?

Saturday, 15/11/2025

3–4:30 PM: “Traces of Care” – A Care Walk around the Bärenzwinger with the Feminist Spaces Collective

11 AM–5 PM: “In-Between. Listening as an Everyday Practice” – Public Intervention by Yun-Chu Liang

Free entry

“Traces of Care” – A Care Walk around the Bärenzwinger with the Feminist Spaces Collective

How can structures of neglect in the city be challenged? This “interactive Care Walk” around the Bärenzwinger explores visible and invisible forms of care in the urban environment. Even within a single city block, multiple traces of care – or its absence – can be found. By walking, observing and sharing, participants are invited to slow down the urban space, take a closer look and experience care as a social and spatial practice. What stories do these traces tell about our way of living together?

“In-Between. Listening as an Everyday Practice” – Public Intervention by Yun-Chu Liang

Visitors are invited to sit at the artist’s table, share a cup of tea, and tell a story. These small moments of encounter interrupt everyday routine and create space for mutual attention and care. The intervention invites people to engage with one another, exploring how shared care can generate a space conducive to exchange and connection.

Location to be announced.

“Coffe, Cake & …”

Sunday, 18/1/2026,
2-4 PM

Free entry

Since 2024, the Bärenzwinger has been inviting all neighbours and interested parties to an afternoon of coffee and cake. Under the motto ‘Coffee, cake and … ’, the Bärenzwinger opens its doors one day per exhibition for a cosy get-together of the neighbourhood.

While we enjoy coffee and homemade cake, we also have the opportunity to chat informally about art and culture.

Closing Event: “on-site Bärenzwinger” – participatory action with Zhenru Liang

Sunday, 25/1/2026,
4-7 PM

Free entry

To conclude “Relations in Place”, artist Zhenru Liang invites visitors to a collective action that activates the core of her installation “on-site Bärenzwinger” – its ongoing negotiation of space and access. Developed in dialogue with the site’s architecture and layered history, the work reflects on barriers, thresholds and forms of encounter.

At the center of the finissage is the shared act itself: visitors are invited to collectively dismantle and rebuild the loosely stacked brick structure. Through this process, shifting modes of access become tangible as multiple perspectives intervene, transforming the Bärenzwinger – if only for a moment – into an open, adaptable space.

Özcan Ertek

Özcan Ertek (*1989, Istanbul) is a Berlin based sonic and media artist whose work explores the relations between sound, sculpture, and motion.

Drawing on his background in mechanical and sound engineering, he creates interactive sound sculptures, kinetic objects, and site-specific installations that investigate how technology, movement, and materiality shape perception and embodied experience.

Through constructing experimental infrastructures, Ertek proposes alternative modes of listening, interaction, and spatial perception, creating dynamic sonic environments where sound becomes an active force that redefines sensory and spatial relationships.

Zhenru Liang

Zhenru Liang is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores the intersection of urban structures and the Earth’s primordial memory. Working across installation, performance, drawing, video, and other visual languages, she investigates how natural forms are shaped, disrupted, and reconfigured by human activity and the evolution of civilization.

Her series of ephemeral installations, “Temporary Theatre”, as a form of anti-monument. Using construction materials in their primary state, Liang constructs modular systems that represent the processes of construction and de-construction. These spatial interventions seek to reconnect artificial structures with the rhythms and spatial logic of nature.

Liang’s practice is deeply rooted in volcanic territories, which she visits for artistic and performative interventions. Her research encompasses sites of geological and cultural significance, including Mount Etna, the Aeolian Islands, Greece, the Balearic Islands, volcanic deposits near Girona in Catalonia, the Roman Castles around Lakes Albano and Nemi, Vesuvius, and the Eifel region. These locations serve as frameworks where the “spatiality of dwelling” unfolds in direct confrontation with the raw, dynamic forces of nature.

Her work reveals how these temporal and spatial layers shape our understanding of architecture, memory, and the environment.

Liang holds a Master’s degree in Visual Arts from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. In 2025, she has been a Visiting Professor at the Brera. Her work has been featured in collective projects at the Venice Biennale in 2022, 2023, and 2025, as well as in the Biennale’s Poetry Session in 2024, and at nGbK Berlin in 2025.

She currently lives and works between Milan and Berlin.

Vanessa Amoah Opoku & Joy Weinberger

Vanessa Amoah Opoku is a German-Ghanaian interdisciplinary artist exploring history, digitality, and marginalized narratives through mixed realities. Her world-making practice constructs alternative epistemological frameworks that challenge conventional notions of innovation and future visions. Her primary artistic tools include 3D scans, video, sculpture, performance, and sound.

Opoku is part of the artist collective PARA, which uses an interdisciplinary, research-based and performative approach to explore various phenomena of globalization and politics of memory. Since 2021, she co-curates the Balance Club Culture Festival, a platform that examines the political significance of club culture, its role within various communities, and its contributions to technological and cultural progression.

She studied Book Art and Graphic/System Design, Art and Digital Media, and Photography in Leipzig, Vienna, and Jerusalem. In 2021, she obtained her Diploma in Fine Arts and finished her Meisterschülerinnen studies (artist distinction) in 2024, with Prof. Tina Bara at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig.

Opoku has had solo exhibitions at EIGEN+ART Lab in Berlin, Synnika in Frankfurt a. M. and in Guangzhou, hosted by the HBS Research Centre of the Times Museum. She has exhibited and showcased at institutions such as Belvedere 21 Vienna, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Fotomuseum Winterthur and Staatstheater Nürnberg. She won multiple awards and has been recently nominated for the S+T+ARTS Prize 2025 of the European Commission and Ars Electronica. In addition to her artistic practice, Opoku teaches at HGK Basel FHNW, Institute Experimental Design and Media Cultures (IXDM), among others. She lives and works in Berlin and Basel.

Joy Weinberger is a textile artist and designer whose practice explores textile structures as metaphors for network systems. She combines the analog process of weaving with digital technologies and understands textiles as a culturally, socially, and politically charged medium that opens up new perspectives through its presence. Collaboration with other artists is an essential part of her work.

he studied at the Berlin-Weissensee Academy of Art (B.A. Textile and Surface Design) and at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle (M.A. Conceptual Textile Design). Since 2021, she has been a member of PARA, an interdisciplinary artist collective, and since 2025, she has been conducting research at a textile institute on the connection between art and science

Politics of Being Heard

with
Katrin Bittl
Seo Hye Lee
Anika Krbetschek
& Zorka Lednárová

Graphic: Nora Keilig

Exhibition

22/8/2025 – 2/11/2025

Curated by
Janine Pauleck

Program coordination
Josephine Steffens
Hannah van der Est

The exhibition »Politics of Being Heard« is the third part of the annual programme HANDLE (with) CARE.

Events

21/8/2025, from 7 PM
Opening

6/9/2025, 2 PM
Audio and tactile tour with Sebastian Schulze & Katrina Blach

13/9. & 14/9.2025, both 12-1 PM
Monument Day
Guided tour with Alice Lorenzon

5/10/2025, 5-7 PM
Neighborhood meeting “Coffee, cake and listening”

18/10/2025, 1-5 PM
Daily program as part of the KGB Action Days:
1 PM: Curator’s tour
with Janine Pauleck
4 PM: Concert
Angela Ordu & FREE SPIRITZ

25/10/2025, 3 PM
Reading by Sabrina Lorenz
“Because sunflowers also bloom in winter”

1/11/2025, 4-7 PM
Finissage

Opening

Thursday, 21/8/2025,
from 7 PM

Free entry

The artistic positions of Katrin Bittl, Seo Hye Lee, Anika Krbetschek, and Zorka Lednárová engage with barriers, participation, and forms of care through different media. Katrin Bittl works with video performances involving self-staging and situations of assistance to question bodily norms, accessibility, and social hierarchies. Seo Hye Lee combines textile and moving image works with personal experiences of hearing loss, addressing questions of accessibility, language, and shared understanding. In her multisensory installation and outdoor work, Anika Krbetschek develops a complex engagement with care, psychiatric violence, and the history of the Bärenzwinger, intertwining sound, video, scent, and materiality.

Zorka Lednárová translates personal experiences of everyday barriers into spatial and physical restrictions for the audience through sculpture and documentary photography, prompting shifts in perspective and direct confrontation.

The exhibition is accompanied by a public program combining inclusive mediation formats and artistic contributions. Planned elements include an audio and tactile tour, text versions in plain language, and a performative program. Further program details will be announced during the course of the exhibition.

Audio and tactile tour with Sebastian Schulze & Katrina Blach

Saturday, 6/9/2025,
2 PM

Meeting point: 15 minutes before the start of the event at the entrance to the Bärenzwinger.

Registration required

Free entry

In German Language

Link to audio flyer (German)

The Bärenzwinger Berlin warmly invites you to the inclusive event “Bilder im Kopf. Dialogical Art Mediation for Listening and Touching” with Katrina Blach (sighted) and Sebastian Schulze (blind) on Saturday, 6 September 2025, at 2 PM. Please meet 15 minutes before the start at the entrance to the Bärenzwinger.
As part of the exhibition “Politics of Being Heard”, the Bärenzwinger invites people with and without visual impairments to exchange views on works from the exhibition.

The exhibition “Politics of Being Heard” asks what it means to be heard—in everyday life, in institutions, and in artistic contexts. At its centre is how we deal with barriers that impede or prevent access: physical, structural, and social. The Bärenzwinger—a listed historic site with limited accessibility—becomes part of this enquiry. The exhibition understands itself as an open process: it makes structural exclusions visible and asks how spaces must be designed so that more people feel heard—not as an exception, but as a matter-of-course within cultural publics. The artistic contributions show that exclusions are deeply anchored in social structures—and open up new perspectives on visibility, responsibility, and care. Through multimedia installations, videos, photographs, textile works, and sculptures, they make the complexity of accessibility tangible—and pose the question under which conditions participation in art and society becomes possible.

Registration
Participation is limited to 20 people.
Please register by 4 September 2025 by phone at 030 901837461 or by email at info@baerenzwinger.berlin.

Need assistance with your journey?
We are happy to pick you up from the nearest public transport stop. Please let us know by 5 September 2025 via email at info@baerenzwinger.berlin.

Katrina Blach works with photography, video, and participatory formats. A central focus of her practice is inclusive and dialogical art mediation, which she understands as a shared process of discovery, questioning, and reflection. Rather than transmitting knowledge, she seeks to create spaces where diverse perspectives can meet. Blach develops projects in art and cultural education that foster empowerment and enable participation.

Sebastian Schulze is blind and has been engaged in inclusive art mediation for many years. As a member of the Inclusion Advisory Board at the Museum of Fine Arts Leipzig (MdbK), he contributed to making exhibitions accessible for blind and visually impaired audiences—through tactile reproductions, audio descriptions, and Braille information. He emphasizes the importance of including blind perspectives from the outset. Schulze understands art mediation as a dialogical process that engages multiple senses and encourages exchange.

“Open Monument Day” at the Bärenzwinger – guided tours with Alice Lorenzon

Saturday & Sunday, 13/9/ & 14/9/2025,
12-1 PM

Registration required

Free entry

In German Language

On 13 and 14 September 2025, the Bärenzwinger Berlin invites you to monument-historical guided tours with Alice Lorenzon through the historic grounds of the Köllnischer Park, taking place each day from 12 to 1 PM as part of the European Heritage Days. The Bärenzwinger, inaugurated in 1939 with Berlin’s city bears, was home to several generations of these symbolic animals for almost 80 years. Until the death of Schnute, the last bear, in 2015, the bears shaped the city’s image. Today, the Bärenzwinger is preserved as a cultural monument and serves as a space for exhibitions and events. Visitors will have the opportunity to learn more about the site’s eventful history and its current use as a venue for contemporary art.

Registration
required by 12 September at info@baerenzwinger.berlin

Alice Lorenzon is an art mediator with a particular interest in the connection between art and storytelling. After studying languages, she turned to art and has been working in municipal galleries and museums for eight years. For the past four years, she has been teaching art at the Kreativitätsgrundschule. She currently works at the Klosterruine and the Bärenzwinger, where she has been regularly offering guided tours as part of the European Heritage Days since 2022. In her mediation practice, she is interested in the themes and impressions visitors take away from the history of a site and how these can open up new perspectives on art and society.

Neighborhood meeting “Soup, tea, and listening”

Sunday, 5/10/2025,
5-7 PM

No registration required

Free entry

The Bärenzwinger warmly invites neighbors and all those interested to join us on Sunday evening for a cozy gathering with soup and tea. This time, the focus is on listening together: we want to create space to share experiences, thoughts, and stories.

The current exhibition “Politics of Being Heard” explores what it means to be heard – in everyday life, in institutions, and in artistic spaces. At the same time, it highlights that listening is a form of care, requiring time, attention, and openness.

Together with the gallery’s curatorial team, we would like to open a conversation: Where do we feel heard, and where not? What structures are needed to truly listen to one another? How can we create spaces in our daily lives in which all voices have room?

Over soup and tea, we invite you to exchange ideas, to listen, and to experience neighborhood as a space where new perspectives and community can emerge.

Daily program KGB Action Days with guided tour & concert

Saturday, 18/10/2025,
1-5 PM
1 PM: Curator’s tour
4 PM: Concert

No registration required

Free entry

Angela Ordu & FREE SPIRITZ

The multicultural Berlin-based women’s ensemble FREE SPIRITZ was founded by Nigerian-German singer Angela Ordu. With an infectious joy for performing, the group transforms diverse musical styles, original compositions, and well-known songs into groovy, danceable music. Their repertoire spans soul, funk, pop, and jazz to African rhythms – always infused with energy, vitality, and a strong sense of togetherness.

In the 1990s, Angela Ordu collaborated with numerous renowned musicians and reached the U.S. charts with her song “Rhythm of Love.” In 2001, her career was interrupted by the autoimmune disease lupus and a stroke. Today, she is back on stage – music has become for her an expression of resilience and strength. She is part of the platform PINC-Music, which supports inclusive music projects, and is also actively involved in raising awareness about lupus.

Line-up:

Angela Ordu – Voc, Shakers (NGA/DE)
Josylyn Segal – Perc, Sax, Voc (USA)
Ria Rother – Bass, Drums (DE)
Andreza Jesus – Voc, Pandero (BRA)
Sol Okarina – Guit, Voc (COL)

Reading by Sabrina Lorenz: “Because sunflowers bloom even in winter”

Saturday, 25/10/2025
3 PM

Free admission

Registration
by October 24 at info@baerenzwinger.berlin

Language: Spoken German

“Feelings exist to be felt.”

What may sound lofty is, in truth, a call for honesty, gentleness, and self-reflection.

With her book “Because Sunflowers Also Bloom in Winter,” Sabrina Lorenz takes her readers on a poetic journey through the four seasons – and at the same time, toward themselves.
As an activist and slam poet, the author, Sabrina Lorenz, seeks to capture the complexity of living with a chronic, progressive, and life-shortening illness.
This includes all the emotions and thoughts that can arise from personal challenges and confrontations, but also within the context of a patriarchal and ableist system.
It is about justice and encouragement to raise one’s voice in a sea of prejudice – a sea in which marginalized groups often seem to have no place.
It is about wounds, discrimination, growth, and new beginnings.
It is a book full of hope, understanding, radical honesty, and courage – with empathetic texts that touch the heart, linger in the mind, and give readers the sense of being seen and heard.

About the author:
With her blog @fragments_of_living, Sabrina Lorenz raises awareness and sparks impulses for disability empowerment.
She brings inclusion onto the stage and into the center of society. Whether as a keynote speaker, as co-organizer together with initiator Kevin Hoffmann of Germany’s largest nationwide community event for people with disabilities and/or chronic illnesses – the Kämpferherzen meeting – or together with Paralympian Moritz Brückner in their joint podcast “Inklusiv UNS.”

Her book “Because Sunflowers Also Bloom in Winter” (2023) creates space for dialogue, understanding, and courage – a must-read for those affected as well as their loved ones. Recognized as part of Zeit Campus’s “30 under 30” (2024) and as the first disabled person nationwide to advocate for inclusive climate protection in the course of the “Future Lawsuit” (September 2024) before the Federal Constitutional Court, Sabrina Lorenz sets an example for a diverse and democratic future.

Katrin Bittl

Katrin Bittl (*1994 in Munich) is a visual artist, freelance author, and peer advisor for artists based in Munich. Until 2023, she studied Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich. A central focus of her artistic practice is the deconstruction of bodily and behavioral norms. She explores the perception of women with disabilities through self-portraits and video performances, aiming for a direct yet unobtrusive confrontation with diverse bodies.

By situating her own body within the plant world, she raises questions about care work, the notion of caregiving, and societal ideals of performance. Her work has been presented in national and international solo and group exhibitions, including Galerie Bezirk Oberbayern, Munich (2023); DG Kunstraum, Munich (2024); HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin (2022); Vivo, Vancouver (2023); and Platform, Munich (2022).

Her artistic practice has been supported by the Visual Arts Scholarship of the City of Munich (2024), the Academy Association Prize (2023), and a #takeHeart residency as part of NEUSTART KULTUR (Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2022).

Seo Hye Lee

Seo Hye Lee is a deaf South Korean artist based in the UK. She studied Visual Communication at the Royal College of Art, London, completing her MA in 2017. Drawing from her lived experience of hearing loss and as a cochlear implant user, she works across drawing, moving image, and multi-sensory installation to explore the intricate terrains of sound and silence. Across her practice, Seo Hye Lee champions accessibility and collaboration, drawing inspiration from both collective and personal encounters with sound.

Her work has been shown in national and international exhibitions, including the V&A Museum, London; Kunsthalle Bremen; Tate Exchange, London; MIMA – Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art; Science Gallery London; Royal College of Art, London; Blackwood Gallery, Mississauga; Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff; Tangled Art + Disability, Toronto; CCA Glasgow and Nottingham Contemporary.

She has also participated in festivals such as the Selected 12 UK Tour (including CCA Glasgow, Fabrica Gallery, Nottingham Contemporary, John Hansard Gallery) and Presents 2023 in Canada and Germany.Her research and projects have been supported by the Vital Capacities Residency and Arts Council England’s DYCP programme.

Anika Krbetschek

Anika Krbetschek (*1997, Berlin) is a spring-born artist, curator, and author based in Berlin. In her post-disciplinary research, she relates what occurs at the edges of psyche, trauma, and memory to systems, collective memories, and neurophysiology. Where politics and history are inscribed in bodies and voices, and psychological knowledge itself has a history, she develops a practice that listens, experiences, and distills. Her projects, which center participation and lived expertise, create artistic formats in which resistant memories and inner realities can become part of an inclusory discourse.

Her work has been presented in national and international solo and group exhibitions, including Petersburg Art Space Gallery, Berlin (2024); Living Room Studio, Yerevan (2025); Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (2024); Goethe-Institut, Yerevan (2024); and KunstHaus Potsdam (2023).

She has also participated in festivals such as Reeperbahn Festival, Hamburg (2023); 48h Neukölln Arts Festival, Berlin (multiple editions since 2020); and Grenzen sind relativ Festival, Hamburg (2023). Her artistic practice has been supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation (2025), the Culture Moves Europe mobility grant (2025), and the Federal Agency for Civic Education (2023).

Zorka Lednárová

Zorka Lednárová (*1976 in Bratislava, Slovakia) is an artist and curator based between Bratislava and Berlin. She studied sculpture, fine art, and calligraphy at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, the Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel, the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, and the Berlin University of the Arts. In large-scale installations, photography, and public space projects, she explores physical and social barriers and their impact on participation, visibility, and belonging.

Her work draws on biographical experiences and often employs subtle yet disruptive interventions to enable shifts in perspective, question power structures, and rethink participation. Her work has been presented in national and international solo and group exhibitions, including Kunsthaus Dresden (2025), OKK/Raum 29, Berlin (2025, 2021), Kunsthalle Bratislava (2024, 2023, 2019), Plato – Ostrava City Gallery (2023), and Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen (2025). She has also participated in festivals such as Biela Noc Bratislava (2023) and Ostrava Camera Eye (2023).

She has received funding from the City of Bratislava (2023), the German-Czech Future Fund (2023), the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe (2020), and Pro Helvetia (2020). As co-founder and long-time director of the project space OKK/Raum 29, she developed platforms for international exchange and collaborative formats.

This, too, is a way of keeping each other close

with
Field Narratives (hn. lyonga & Lene Markusen)
Sarnt Utamachote
Theresa Weber
Zhou Yichen
& Lauryn Youden

Graphic: Nora Keilig

Exhibition

29/5/2025 – 10/8/2025

Curated by
Maxime Lübke
& Annika Reketat

The exhibition »This, too, is a way of keeping each other close« is the second part of the annual programme HANDLE (with) CARE.

Events

28/5/2025, from 7 PM
Opening
8 PM: Performance GLITCH CHOIR

21/62025, from 4 PM
Venue at Fête de la Musique

19/72025, from 2 PM
Ways of Staying With
Day program with workshop, performance & panel on Queering Grief & Loss

24/7/2025, from 7 PM
5:30 PM: Curator’s tour
Where Words Stay, When Home Fades
7:00 PM: Reading & Talk with Atefe Asadi & Sarah Rauchfuß (Farsi with German translation)

3/8/2025, 2-4 PM
Kaffee, Kuchen & Schnute
Open neighborhood gathering

10/8/2025, 5-6:30 PM
Slow Finissage & pIAR Dinner

Opening

28/5/2025, from 7 PM
Opening

8 PM Performance GLITCH CHOIR

Free entry

Bärenzwinger Berlin warmly invites you to the opening of the group exhibition “This, too, is a way of keeping each other close” on May 28, 2025 from 7 PM. As the second exhibition in this year’s program HANDLE [with] CARE, it centers lives and losses that are often excluded from public rituals of mourning and remembrance.

The artistic positions by hn. lyonga & Lene Markusen (together with Sascia Bailer & Andreas Doepke as the collective Field Narratives), Sarnt Utamachote, Theresa Weber, Zhou Yichen, and Lauryn Youden approach grief not as mere pain, but as a deeply social, political, and relational practice –

as a way to take responsibility, to practice care, and to foster connections, especially where public recognition and remembrance has long been denied. Through queer, anticolonial, and community-based gestures, they open spaces for empathy, closeness, and solidarity.

The exhibition space itself is a site of commemoration: 2025 marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Schnute, the last bear to be kept in the Bärenzwinger.

The exhibition is accompanied by a public program focused on poetic, performative, and educational formats.

Performance: GLITCH CHOIR

28/5/2025, 8 PM

Free entry

No registration required

GLITCH CHOIR transfers the phenomenon of the glitch – the unexpected result of a digital malfunction – into the analog space, exploring how disruptions can open new forms of expression. At the heart of the piece is the recomposition of a song of lament, deconstructed and transformed through glitching. Historically, public mourning has been a practice performed predominantly by women, often professional lamenters, who express grief on behalf of others. This tradition reveals the paradox of women being both permitted and burdened to translate private emotions into public mourning.

In this performance, two female performers create a collective body of mourning, inviting the audience into a resonant, multivocal space. The inherent vocal distortions of lamentation become a medium for transforming individual grief into a collective glitch.

Choreography & concept: Deva Schubert
Performance: Chihiro Araki, Deva Schubert & guests

Chihiro Araki (she/her) is a dance, voice and performance artist based in Berlin. After training at The Tokyo Ballet School and earning BA from Rambert School in London, she has danced with Carte Blanche / The Norwegian National Company of Contemporary Dance and Johannes Wieland Company, as well as for Alban Richard, Jenny Beyer, Helena Waldmann, Meg Stuart, Deva Schubert, Lina Gómez, Sergiu Matis, Jule Flierl and musical artist Pan Daijing.

Deva Schubert is a choreographer and dancer based in Berlin. Her work explores the voice in relation to dance, installation, and digital media. She studied in Salzburg, Kassel, Copenhagen, and at HZT Berlin. Her artistic practice addresses intimacy, collectivity, and transdisciplinary synergies, and has been presented at institutions such as Haus der Kunst Munich, Kunsthalle Zurich, and the Transart Festival Bolzano. In 2024, she received the ImPulsTanz – Young Choreographers’ Award for Glitch Choir.

Bärenzwinger at the Fête de la Musique

21/6/2025,
16-21:30 PM

Admission free

No registration required

On 21 June, the Bärenzwinger will become a stage: for the first time, we will be part of the Fête de la Musique and invite you to the outdoor area in Köllnischer Park. Live acts from retro-soul to synth-punk will provide musical variety where real bears used to roam – open air and with free admission. Come along and celebrate the longest day of the year with us!

Line-up:

4:00 pm: Jelena Brand

5:00 pm: Krisenmanagement

6:15 pm: Jochen

7:30 pm: Tango Bravo

8:45 pm: ÖPNV

Ways of Staying With – Theme day with workshop, discussion & performance

19/7/2025

3 to 5 PM: Workshop with Joachim Perez

5:30 PM: Panel discussion

7 PM: Performance with Jeremy Wade

Admission free

No registration required

On Saturday, 19 July 2025, from 3 PM Bärenzwinger Berlin invites you to a theme day entitled “Ways of Staying With” as part of the exhibition “This, too, is a way of keeping each other close”. The exhibition brings together queer, anti-colonial and embodied perspectives on grief, memory and spirituality. The artistic positions explore how grief can become a place of relationship, resistance, and continuity.

“Ways of Staying With” is dedicated to the question of what it means to stay with one another – across loss, distance and time. The day brings together artistic, activist and collective practices that resist forgetting and instead linger with the vulnerable, the unresolved and the fragile.

Collective Threads: Textile Workshop with Joachim Perez
The event kicks off from 3 to 5 PM with the bilingual, open workshop Collective Threads with artist Joachim Perez. Participants will work together with discarded textiles – as an exercise in memory, repair and connectedness. Perez’s practice combines hand-sewn textile architectures with diasporic narratives and intergenerational exchange.
This is a drop-in format: interested parties can come and go as they please. The workshop is open to all age groups. No prior knowledge is required.

Panel Discussion: Queering Grief & Loss
At 5:30 PM, a panel discussion follows with Sarnt Utamachote (researcher, filmmaker, curator), Francis Seeck (professor at TH Nürnberg, author, and anti-discrimination trainer), and Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi (crazinisT artisT) (performance and installation artist, LGBTQIA+ activist from Ghana).

Queer grief often speaks to the loss of a life imagined differently – of futures that have been dismantled or denied. Drawing on José Esteban Muñoz’s theory, it explores mourning as a longing for what has not yet been possible. LGBTQIAs+ are frequently rendered invisible in death and mourning – particularly queers who face legal and social obstacles that criminalize their identities or deny them the right to grieve.
What infrastructures or alternative practices of grieving exist for queers? How can we mourn and die outside of heteronormative, bureaucratized funeral cultures? Who is considered “worthy” of burial? And who tends to the graves if ties to one’s family of origin are broken?
Prof. Dr. Francis Seeck, Sarnt Utamachote, and Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi will discuss current developments around queer cemeteries in Berlin, the deaths of young queers due to substance abuse in nightlife scenes, and rituals of care within queer mourning groups – all while considering intersections of class, gender, and race.
The talk will be held in English and moderated by Maxime Lübke.

Performance with Jeremy Wade
The event will conclude at 7 PM with a collective performance by Jeremy Wade, consisting of three participatory rituals. The focus is on community, systemic care and support in times of loss, grief and crisis. The performance creates a space for shared pause, physical sensation and ritual gesture.

Where Words Stay When Home Fades: Reading with Atefe Asadi & Sarah Rauchfuß in Farsi and German

24/7/2025

5:30 PM: Curator’s tour
with Maxime Lübke & Annika Reketat

7:00 PM: Reading

Free entry

No registration required

When home disappears, language is often the last thing that remains — and at the same time the first to risk breaking apart in exile. Bärenzwinger Berlin invites you to a reading with Iranian author Atefe Asadi and translator Sarah Rauchfuß on July 24 at 7 PM. The reading offers a glimpse into literary fragments from a life in between: caught between inner rebellion and outer silence, between remembering in one’s mother tongue and expressing oneself in a foreign language.

Asadi’s texts emerge from experiences of repression, migration, and alienation. They do not simply tell “of Iran,” but reveal a daily reality torn apart by political violence. Written in Farsi, these stories carry voices silenced in places of control. In the reading, they meet a new language – Rauchfuß’s German translation – which is not a mere reflection but a tentative chamber of resonance.

The evening is part of the exhibition This, too, is a way of keeping each other close, which explores queer, feminist, and anti-colonial perspectives on memory, care, and the narration of loss. It focuses on invisible stories, fragmented narratives, and forms of mourning that create closeness through shared vulnerability.

Atefe Asadi is an Iranian writer, poet, editor, and translator known for her role in Iran’s underground literary scene. Her three collections of short stories have been banned by the Iranian Ministry of Culture, and her literary activities and participation in protest movements have led to her persecution and arrest. She subsequently became a writer-in-residence with ICORN (International Cities of Refugees Network), received the Hannah Arendt Fellowship, and settled in Germany. There, she campaigns for literature in exile and for freedom in Iran through school visits, interviews, cultural programs, and residencies such as the Stiftung Künstlerdorf Schöppingen and the Kultur Ensemble Palerme. Her works, which explore women’s rights, migration, discrimination, and freedom, have been translated into English, German, and Italian. Her first collection of short stories is currently being translated into German.

Sarah Rauchfuß (born 1990 in Ottersberg near Bremen) has been translating contemporary Persian literature from Afghanistan and Iran since 2019. She works as a freelance translator for the Weiter Schreiben project, the DAAD and various literary institutions and festivals in German-speaking countries. Her second novel translation, Bahram Moradi’s “Das Gewicht der anderen” (Wallstein Verlag), will be published in August 2025.

“Kaffee, Kuchen & Schnute”: Open neighborhood gathering

3/8/2025, 2-4 PM

Free entry

No registration required

Schnute, the last bear to have lived in Berlin‘s Bärenzwinger, died 10 years ago, in October 2015. Her death marked the end of an era that still moves many Berliners today. To commemorate her death, we cordially invite you to „Kaffee, Kuchen & Schnute“, a neighbourhood gathering in memory of Schnute.

With coffee, cake and conversations we want to share memories of Schnute and the Bärenzwinger, a place that has transformed from an animal enclosure to a contemporary art gallery.

Share your stories, anecdotes, and photos of Schnute or the Bärenzwinger with us!

Write us at: info@bärenzwinger.berlin. Selected submissions will be added to a memorial album, which will be displayed in the Bärenzwinger.

Alongside the neighbourhood gathering we are offering a workshop: in memory of Schnute, we will write memories, thoughts and wishes on seed paper, which will then be buried in the Garden of the Bärenzwinger. From words, flowers will grow.

Once per exhibition, with the format “Kaffee, Kuchen & …” the Bärenzwinger opens its doors for an informal neighbourhood gathering. We look forward to old friends, new faces and many shared memories.

Slow Finissage & pIAR Dinner

10/8/2025, 5-6:30 PM

Free Registration, please sign up here: https://forms.gle/YxqCqfiRKEcDQFUc9

On the final day of the exhibition This, too, is a way of keeping each other close, we invite you to a moment of mindful pause – and to a ritual designed to celebrate closeness. Together with the crazinisT artist studiO, we are bringing the pIAR Dinner to Berlin: a culinary and storytelling gathering that has formed the heartbeat of the perfocraZe International Artist Residency (pIAR) in Kumasi, Ghana, since its founding in 2019.

Inspired by the family dinners of Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi’s childhood – and a living tradition in many Ghanaian households – the pIAR Dinner invites guests to gather at a long red table, eat from the same bowls, and share stories. It is a space for conversations about life, culture, intimacy, and politics, for laughter, and for quiet listening.

Like the exhibition itself, this performative ritual seeks ways of staying close – across differences, between cultures, languages, genders, and experiences. We look forward to sharing this communal experience at the Bärenzwinger with Berlin-based pIAR members, friends, allies, and curious guests, and to welcoming you to the final day of our summer exhibition This, too, is a way of keeping each other close.

Menu
The pIAR Dinner will serve a selection of traditional Ghanaian dishes, both vegan and non-vegan:

Banku and Pepper – available vegan or with okro soup, fish, and meat.
Waakye – served to all guests, with optional boiled egg and Shito (spicy chili sauce).
Red Red – beans, palm oil, gari, pepper, and plantain.
Sobolo – a refreshing hibiscus drink with ginger, cloves, Grains of Selim, and Grains of Paradise.

Field Narratives (hn. lyonga & Lene Markusen)

hn. lyonga is a Black, Queer, interdisciplinary writer, poet, and currently a Human Maschine Fellow at E-Werk Lückenwalde and Akademie Der Künste, Berlin.

His work focuses on writing, storytelling, and community making. It looks at migrational inquiries pertinent to historically colonized and marginalized communities. Among other things, he is a neighbor, a (livelong) student, a member of the curatorial board of BARAZANI.berlin – Forum Kolonialismus und Widerstand, working on ideas of rural biographies, transgenerational and cross-continental storytelling. His work qualifies as ‘Wake Work’: a labour within the space of paradoxes surrounding Black citizenship; it is also the work of ‘continuous inhabiting and rupturing of episteme.’ (Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, 2016).”

hardeson lolita is a certified Dementia caregiver, mother, and grandmother. In another life, hardeson lolita was an Elementary school educator, business owner, and contractor for CDC. She is born and raised in the southwest regions of Cameroon and is currently based in Duisburg.

Markus Posse is a performance artist and researcher. After graduating from Performance Studies, he worked as a dramaturg and artistic collaborator at spaces such as Deutsches SchauSpielHaus Hamburg, Theater Dortmund, Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt, and so forth. In addition, he is currently finishing his training to become a Drama Therapist.

Lene Markusen is a visual artist and filmmaker. Her work weighs in on historical discontinuities and spatial disparities, activating the catalytic and micro-utopian moments of performance and storytelling. An essential element in her work is the inclusion of drawing; exploring the disposition of this media in space and time, she negotiates more-than-human relations and the potential of improvisation and processes. She received the Villa Romana Prize in 2021. Her films and video installations have been screened and exhibited internationally, most recently at Gropius Bau, Berlin, Arthur Boskamp-Stiftung, Hohenlockstedt and Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken among others.

Field Narratives is an artistic research platform for rural biographies, transgenerational and cross-continental storytelling. It consists of Sascia Bailer, Andreas Doepke, hn. lyonga and Lene Markusen.

Sarnt Utamachote

Sarnt Utamachote is a Southeast Asian nonbinary filmmaker and curator in Berlin. Their work explores the intersection between activism and contemporary art through intense archival research and community-based collaborations in the form of exhibition or film.

They have curated exhibitions or programs for institutions such as HKW, Schwules Museum, nGbK, Sinema Transtopia, shaping conversations on migration, queerness, and transnationalism.

Additionally, they work as a film programmer for XPOSED Queer Film Festival Berlin and Short Film Festival Hamburg.

Theresa Weber

Theresa Weber was born in Düsseldorf in 1996 and lives and works in Berlin. Weber studied painting with Katharina Grosse and Ellen Gallagher at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, graduating as a master student in 2021.

She was then awarded a two-year postgraduate degree at the Royal College of Art in London. She has had solo exhibitions at Kunstmuseum Bochum, Neun Kelche, Berlin (2024), Somerset House, London (2023), Dortmunder Kunstverein and Moltkerei Werkstatt e.V., Cologne (2021).

Theresa Weber’s works can be found in the collections of the Bundeskunstsammlung, the Kunstmuseum Bochum, the Morgan Stanley Collection, the London School of Economics (LSE) Collection, the Mercedes Benz Collection, the Philara Collection, the By-Form Design Studio Collection and many more.

Zhou Yichen

Zhou Yichen was born in Wuhan, China, in 1993. He is a new media artist whose practice centers on video games.

He earned his bachelor’s degree from the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts in 2017, followed by a first master’s degree from the same institution in 2020.

In 2021, he completed a second master’s degree at Pratt Institute. Zhou currently lives and works in Wuhan, China.

Lauryn Youden

Lauryn Youden is a sculptor, poet, performance, and installation artist based in Berlin, Germany. Her practice derives from her research in and navigation through the medical industrial complex / colonial medicine, ‘alternative’ healing practices and traditional medicine for the treatment of her chronic illnesses and disabilities.

By publicly presenting her personal experiences and re-evaluations of history, she illuminates and advocates for repressed, marginalized, and forgotten forms of care and Crip knowledge.

She has performed and exhibited internationally at institutions such as the Museion Bolzano, Frye Art Museum (Seattle), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), 11th Berlin Biennale, Manifesta 12 (Palermo), and Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), among others.

Recent exhibitions include Kunsthalle Zurich, Migros Museum (Zurich), Pogo Bar – KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), and Rochester Art Center (USA). They are currently a participant in BPA// Berlin program for artists.

If my neighbour is okay, I’m okay

with
Edna Al-Najar
Belia Zanna Geetha Brückner
Ece Cangüden
and Elvis Osmanović

Graphic: Nora Keilig

Exhibition

7/3/2025 – 18/5/2025
Extended by two weeks!

Curated by
Alin Daghestani, Philipp Hennch and Dr. Maximilian Krämer

The exhibition »If my neighbour is okay, I’m okay« is the fourth part of the annual programme HANDLE (with) CARE.

Events

6/3/2025, 6 pm
Opening

16/3/2025, 2–4 pm
Workshop with Belia Brückner
»turning societal problems into crimes«

25/3/2025, 6 pm
»Curating through Conflict with Care« as special guest at Bärenzwinger

3/4/2025, 7 pm
Guided tour by the curators (in German)

13/4/2025, 2–4 pm
Neighborhood meeting »Coffee, Cake and Recipes«

26/4/2025
3–5 pm »The Tides of Far Spheres: A Lore-Making Performative Game« with Aslı Dinç (in English and Turkish)
5:30 pm Artist Talk with Ece Cangüden

4/5/2025, Programme during Gallery Weekend
2–3 pm Artist Talk with Edna Al-Najar and Elvis Osmanović
3:30–5 pm »Consultation Hour of the Ministry of Empathy«

18/5/2025, 4-7 pm
Finissage

Opening

6/3/2025, 6 pm
Opening

7 pm Welcome

7:30 pm DJ Set with Hinna

Free entry

On Thursday, 6 March 2025, Bärenzwinger warmly invites you to the opening of the exhibition “If my neighbour is okay, I’m okay” at 6 pm. At 7 pm there will be a greeting and from 7:30 pm pm there will be a DJ set by Hinna.

The exhibition will feature a diverse range of workshops, artist talks, a guided tour by the curators, and a discourse format, with a special program taking place during Gallery Weekend (4 May 2025) as well as other education programmes.

With the artists Edna Al-Najar, Belia Zanna Geetha Brückner, Ece Cangüden, and Elvis Osmanović

DJ-Set by Hinna
Hinna is a Berlin-based DJane and producer, who creates a journey from atmospheric sounds to danceable rhythms with her curated set for Bärenzwinger. She blends house, afro-Latin beats, and disco, steadily building the energy of the evening.

ARE WE OKAY? MUTUALLY CARING FOR EACH OTHER

Why do we care for one another at all? The assumption embedded in the title may offer an initial answer, yet it also invites further questions. How far does the reciprocity it implies extend? Whom do we feel close to, and why? And should this sense of closeness shape the way we care for others?

The spring exhibition launches the Bärenzwinger’s 2025 program –“HANDLE (with) CARE” – with a focus on the ambiguities and overlooked aspects of care culture. It looks at forms of care practice in which the inclusion of people and the exclusion of others are intertwined – or those that restrict rather than provide support. The exhibition also reflects on the Bärenzwinger, both past and present, as a space of care. It invites visitors to explore how notions of caring for others are translated architecturally, sculpturally, physically, and visually through an engagement with the site’s specific conditions. Do these forms offer support today, or do they primarily impose restrictions?

REVISTING ENCLOSING ARCHITECTURES OF CARE

Having once served as an animal enclosure, the architecture of the Bärenzwinger Berlin is imbued with a distinct understanding of care. A plaque on the west side of the monument reads: “Our dear bear cubs shall thrive.” With three barred cells, two moats and an open view on Köllnischer Park, the architecture of the 1930s resonates the then and there care for bears like Schnute. Built in the taste of modern pragmatism, the bears were confined in tight enclosures, where their bodies were pressed against metal bars and where they had to move through narrow hatches. Two intermediate doors with peepholes carefully separated caregivers from those being cared for. These are architectures of care, traces of caring enclosure so to say – for each other and in front of each other.

What today serves as an exhibition space – the atrium, the cages, the storage and back rooms where the food was prepared – was originally not designed for the public. Visitors could observe the bears and the care they received from their keepers only from a distance, separated by the moat.

CHALLENGES OF CARE IN CURATORIAL PRACTICE

With regard to the current use, it is ultimately also about the question of how we can endorse a careful, non-patronizing form of care at Bärenzwinger as well as in our curatorial approach. Curating derives from the Latin verb curare, which means “to care for, to look after”. However, curator once also referred to a guardian, administrator or overseer and cura could also mean the power to care for persons with mental disorders, in addition to various other meanings. Without delving even deeper into the complex history of terms and law, it becomes clear then that this term, which today refers in particular to the exhibition of art, holds this double-bind.

Despite its ambivalence, the title of the exhibition underscores that care is not merely an individual duty, but a collective responsibility, unfolding in a network of mutual relationships. It presupposes the recognition of the other as both in need of and deserving of care. In English, the term “neighbour” also designates the neighbour in an ethical and religious sense. In the age of modernity and contemporary times, though, the viability of an ethics rooted in neighbourly love has repeatedly been criticised, prominently by Theodor W. Adorno and Slavoj Žižek. Yet, one might ask if people still encounter each other as neighbours when their relationship is mediated by institutions, thus losing its immediacy.

Belia Zanna Geetha Brückner carries out maintenance work on the building. She works in a room that is actually closed to the public, which – like the entire interior of the Bärenzwinger in the past – is not intended for visitors today. She renovated the kitchen, which is also the lounge for the exhibition guides of the Bärenzwinger Gallery – “care-taking” in the back office. The special thing about it is that her artistic contribution disappears in the result. It is hardly perceived as such. Care work, especially that of women and FLINTA*, usually remains invisible.

Part of Brückners Recipes for Freedom series will be displayed in the kitchen: recipes for meals that prisoners long to prepare and share with others upon their release. While highlighting the unifying yet sometimes exclusionary nature of food cultures, Brückner also draws attention to the alienating mechanisms of our penal and justice system. At the same time, incarceration is framed as a form of societal welfare – an idea that the work critically examines. Ultimately, the framing serves to obscure deeper social issues from public view. In the Bärenzwinger, visitors can find a recipe by climate activist Margaret. Because of the disruption of the 2023 Snooker World Championship, she is currently held in custody and is awaiting further court proceedings, during which she will have to answer for actions carried out in the context of her climate activism.

In the central atrium of the bear kennel, visitors encounter Xenoshift, a site-specific installation by Ece Cangüden, inspired by the architectural intensity of the bars that once enclosed the bears. Deliberately distorted metal rods serve as structural supports for organic forms – shapes that evoke a being suspended between dissolution and reconfiguration, in constant motion yet never arriving. Here, even the organic is less a symbol of unity or identity than an abstraction – an imprint of an alien, unfamiliar body that has never existed in this form before. Rather than provoking confrontation, Cangüden’s work invites an experience of openness, suggesting that it is precisely these emerging spaces that create room for empathy.

Positioned at the heart of the building, the expansive sculptural elements also allude to the site’s transformation from an animal enclosure to an experimental space for contemporary art. The architecture echoes a past shaped by exclusion, while its new function as a gallery seeks more inclusive pathways – engaging in a dialogue with this history. In Cangüden’s work, the bars shift from barriers of separation to structures of connection and support, prompting a reflection on what sustains, upholds, and divides.

A closer look reveals subtle nuances – shading, overlays, scribbles, and the partial removal of colour. In this way, Xenoshift navigates the fluid processes of memory and transformation. The installation reflects a fragmented sense of belonging, where recollection is destabilized and the boundaries that dictate who or what belongs where begin to dissolve. What traces remain of the fictitious bodies that pressed themselves too much – or not enough – into and against these bars? And what is more likely to be deformed: the socially constructed architectures or the individuals forced to conform to them?

Edna Al-Najar’s und Elvis Osmanović’s artistic positions are located in the cages and are thus placed in the bears’ former refuges.

In the joint work Ya Habibi Taala – حبيبي تعال – Aesthetics of Absence the artists implement visual juxtapositions and connections. Diptychs transform from concordant structures and forms into dissonant and disparate views: incompatible images tell of seeing or not seeing the results of climate change, regional and global crises, and of a split perception. Who experiences such crises and who only learns of them? Are we still listening to whether our neighbours are okay? Alternating idealised commercial film-aesthetic and documentary footage, the split screen montage is just as reminiscent of personal cognitive dissonance as it is of the question of what is remembered and what fades away in the face of the media’s communication of events.

Alongside the video work, Edna Al-Najar presents four paintings from her series We Barely Spoke, created specifically for the exhibition. In these works, two seemingly unrelated narratives intertwine: the story of the Berlin bears and the artist’s own experience of growing up as a marginalised person in Germany. Al-Najar depicts herself in an intense confrontation with Berlin’s heraldic animal. She thereby addresses political structures, power and exclusion. The paintings move between observation and speculation and call into question what is remembered, what is forgotten and who is permitted to exist freely.

Elvis Osmanović’s solo work From Sheitan 1 | Digest, is a photo series created between 2022 and 2024. In his pictures, he examines the relationship between marginalisation and anonymity. They capture fragmented moments that tell stories of being excluded, but also of shared existence.

Workshop: “Turning Societal Problems into Crimes“

Sunday, 16 March 2025,
2-4 pm

with Belia Zanna Geetha Brückner

Free entry

Registration is not required.

On Sunday, 16 March from 2 to 4 pm, we warmly invite you to write postcards to prisoners with us. The workshop is part of our current exhibition “If my neighbour is okay, I’m okay”. The artist Belia Zanna Geetha Brückner, who also designed the postcards, will explain her artistic practice in a discussion with the curatorial team.

Part of her series Recipes for Freedom is currently on display in the Bärenzwinger. These are recipes for dishes that prisoners would like to cook together with others after their release. For the exhibition, she has selected the letter and recipe of an incarcerated British climate activist. The soup will be prepared and eaten together during the workshop.

Writing to someone you don’t even know can be a bit overwhelming at first. During the workshop, various letters from Brückner’s research and the respective detention backgrounds are read aloud, which makes it easier to relate to the reality of the imprisoned people.

In this way, the workshop also deals with very fundamental questions: Why is prison an important place of class struggle? What roles do recipes play in the context of communication with prisoners? Particular attention will be paid to the increasing criminalisation of climate activists and the close connection between poverty and penalisation in our society.

The workshop offers space for critical reflection on the justice system and enables new perspectives on social problems that are redefined as criminal offences through direct communication with prisoners.

The International Day of Political Prisoners is on 18 March.

“Curating through Conflict with Care” as special guest at Bärenzwinger

Tuesday, 25 March 2025,
from 6 pm

with Maithu Bùi and Duygu Örs

Free entry

Registration is not required.

On Tuesday, 25 March from 6 pm, we warmly invite curators, art and culture professionals and everyone interested to an open evening of discussion with Maithu Bùi and Duygu Örs. They treat conflict or contradiction as a method to identify and reveal the paradoxes of inclusive curating.

Curating through Conflict with Care (CCC) is a research collective founded in 2020 by Ayasha Guerin, Duygu Örs, Maithu Bùi and Moshtari Hilal. Working and organizing across a multiplicity of languages and borders, they explore the role and responsibilities of curatorial practice which the group understands to be full of contradictions of care. To advance best practices and existing debates, they draw upon contemporary case studies.

As a work group commissioned by the general member assembly of nGbK they realised a three-day summer symposium in 2023 and in 2024 they launched an online-platform that brings together the results of the gathering and additional materials accessible to all:

https://ngbk.de/en/diskurs/curating-through-conflict-with-care-ccc/ueber-ccc

The discourse format in the Bärenzwinger builds on this work and invites participants to contribute their own experiences from working in the cultural sector. There is a particular focus on BIPoC perspectives.

Guided tour by the curators (in German)

Thursday, 3 April 2025,
7 pm

with Alin Daghestani, Philipp Hennch and Dr. Maximilian Krämer

Free entry

Registration is not required.

On Thursday, 3 April from 7 pm, we warmly invite all who are interested to a curatorial tour with Alin Daghestani, Philipp Hennch and Dr Maximilian Krämer in the Bärenzwinger. The current exhibition deals with the ambivalences of care and neighbourhood. This evening is not only an opportunity to talk about this topic and learn more about the artistic positions, but also about the work of the municipal gallery itself.

It is a double look behind the scenes. What today serves as an exhibition space was not originally intended for the public. The bears, and thus the result of this special care, could only be viewed by visitors from the outside, across the moat. At present, however, art is even shown in the kitchen, which is also the lounge for the gallery’s exhibition guides.

During the tour, you will find out what this has to do with the topic of care. But also what challenges this listed building poses for the artistic management team, the daily gallery work and, last but not least, the artists. Each work communicates with the location – exhibiting in a cage changes the context.

We look forward to an open dialogue.

Neighborhood meeting »Coffee, Cake and Recipes«

Sunday, 13 April 2025,
2pm – 4pm

Free entry

Registration is not required.

The Bärenzwinger invites all neighbours and anyone interested to come along for a cosy Sunday afternoon with free coffee and cake and to exchange recipes with the gallery’s artistic management team.

The current exhibition “If my neighbour is okay, I’m okay” deals with the topic of care and the question of where and with whom it begins and ends. The very architecture of the Bärenzwinger – once an animal enclosure – echoes a special understanding of care. By engaging with this place, the artists explore different perspectives on neighbourhood and care.

Cooking for ourselves and others is a very direct way of expressing care. Who doesn’t remember the feeling of warmth and comfort that childhood meals evoked, or a soup that was supposed to give us strength when we were ill?

But above all, food and food culture connect us – they create spaces for exchange and strengthen communities. That’s what we want to celebrate on this special neighbourhood Sunday with coffee and cake. We would be delighted if you could bring along your favourite recipes – write them down, print them out or simply tell us about the dishes and the story behind them.

Under the motto ”Coffee, cake and …”, the Bärenzwinger opens its doors one day per exhibition period for an informal get-together with the neighbourhood.

The Tides of Far Spheres: A Lore-Making Performative Game by Aslı Dinç (in English and Turkish)

Saturday, 26 April 2025, 4–5 pm (changed starting time)

Free participation

Registration required at info@baerenzwinger.berlin

What happens when a former dungeon becomes a stage? When rusted metal begins to speak as an oracle?

In this site-specific roleplaying experience, collective storytelling merges with physical performance. Guided by a Dungeon Master, participants draw handcrafted cards—each one a portal into quests, unfolding in dialogue with Xenoshift, the sculptural installation by Ece Cangüden.

Rooted in the Cthulhu Mythos, players navigate speculative histories and bodily memories: whispering, crouching, mirroring—blurring the lines between animal and human, refuge and prison, past and future.

Every gesture is a spell. And the only rule that remains? All boundaries are fictions. Especially the ones we’ve been taught to call home.

Artist Talk with Ece Cangüden

Saturday, 26 April 2025, 5:30 pm

Free admission

No registration required

Ece Cangüden (*1989) is a Berlin-based visual artist originally from Istanbul. Her work delves into themes of memory, transformation, and belonging, where fragmented identities and changing boundaries take center stage.

She studied interior architecture and environmental design. Her almost ten years of professional experience in this field is also apparent in the site-specific installation Xenoshift at Bärenzwinger.

Cangüden transforms the architectural intensity of the bars once enclosing bears into fluid symbols of connection and support. The organic forms, suspended between dissolution and reconfiguration, invite us to shift our perspective.

In her artist talk Cangüden will share more insights into how her artistic practice began and developed. And she will also explain how the topics of the exhibition – care, neighbourliness but also alienation – are aesthetically represented in her work.

Programme during Gallery Weekend

Artist Talk

with Edna Al-Najar and Elvis Osmanović

Sunday, 4 May 2025,
2-3 pm

Free admission

No registration required

On Sunday, 4 May from 2 to 3 pm, we warmly invite you to an artist talk with Edna Al-Najar and Elvis Osmanović at Bärenzwinger. In dialogue, they will provide insights into their individual artistic practices, their collaboration and the process of creating their works in the Bärenzwinger. Free admission, no registration required.

»Consultation Hour of the Ministry of Empathy«

Sunday, 4 May 2025,
3:30-5 pm

Free admission

Please register under info@baerenzwinger.berlin

Spontaneous participation is possible.

The Ministry of Empathy invites everyone to a consultation in the Bärenzwinger. In half-hour 1:1 sessions, we ask each other questions about the political dimension of care, fears and hopes and the associations they evoke. The language game of speech & response follows a precise choreography. The content is as open as the form is strict. The minister is no smarter than her counterpart and she goes where the journey takes her. Her questions are questions that open up a shared space for thought—she has many of them and no inhibitions about asking them.

The Ministry of Empathy is a collective that offers empathetic resistance: against the brutalization of language and social coldness. It was founded in 2018 during the conference “Ängst is now a Weltanschauung” at Ballhaus Ost. Since then, the ministry has been working towards a more caring society with text contributions in numerous media and through events, for example at the literaturforum im brechthaus, the Literatur Colloquium am Wannsee, the Munich Kammerspiele and Volksbühne. The minister’s performative speaking hour has been held at literature and theater festivals throughout the German-speaking world.

Slow Finissage

Sunday, 18 May 2025,
4-7 pm

Free admission

On Sunday, 18 May from 4 to 7 pm, we warmly invite you to our slow finissage marking the end of “If my neighbour is okay, I’m okay”, the spring exhibition within our 2025 program HANDLE (with) CARE. Take a final look at the artistic works by Edna Al-Najar, Belia Brückner, Ece Cangüden, and Elvis Osmanović, and join us for drinks, snacks and conversations with the curators in a relaxed atmosphere.

Our finissage is part of ICOM’s International Museum Day 2025 under the theme “The Future of Museums in Rapidly Changing Communities.”

We look forward to seeing you!

Edna Al-Najar

(* Crailsheim, Germany) is a multidisciplinary artist working in sculpture, video animation, painting and photography. Her work explores themes of resilience, memory, and the interplay of past and future.

She studied fine arts at the State Academy of Visual Arts in Stuttgart, Germany (graduating in January 2024) with professors Heba Y. Amin, Ülkü Süngün and Reto Boller.

Al-Najar has exhibited as a solo or group artist at Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, the Venice Biennale, and the Muslim Contemporary in Vienna amon others. In 2024, she received the Shift scholarship from the Cultural Office of the City of Stuttgart. She was also a fellow of the LABA Berlin fellowship program and was and was featured in the exhibition Mar’a’yeh 2024 at Künstlerhaus Bethanien.

Belia Zanna Geetha Brückner

(* Mönchengladbach, Germany) studied time-based media at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg and at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Her research-based works have been awarded the Karl H. Ditze Prize and the Max Ernst Scholarship, among others, and have been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Hamburg (2023), Prague (2023), London (2023) and Berlin (2024).

From 2023 to 2024 she was a scholar of the Hamburger Kulturstiftung for the promotion of young artists. She has been a participant of the Berlin program for artists (BPA) since 2025.

Ece Cangüden

(* Istanbul, Turkey), holds a BA in Interior Architecture and Environmental Design from Istanbul Commerce University.
She lives and works in Berlin.

Her selected solo shows include the following: Feral Stations, VIABLE (Istanbul, 2024); This Could Be Us but You Playin, Porte (Leipzig, 2022); How Are We Going to Live?, Sunny Brooks Art Center (Leipzig, 2021); I love disaster and I love what comes after SUB (Çanakkale, 2018).

Cangüden has participated in group shows such as Mental Imagery of Things, Not Actually Present, Summart (Istanbul, 2022); Ameisen und Haufen (2021, BSMNT as part of her residency); Last Minutes THE POOL (Heybeliada/Istanbul 2021); Mamut Art Project (Istanbul, 2019). Goethe Institute and the Hrant Dink Foundation supported her projects. She has co-founded THE POOL curatorial project in Istanbul.

Elvis Osmanović

(* Doboj, SFR Yugoslavia, today Bosnia and Herzegovina) lives and works in Berlin. His multidisciplinary practice, including photography, video, and installations, explores the complexity of social dynamics.

Themes such as displacement, exile, and trauma are central to his work, inviting viewers to reflect on the multifaceted nature of human experiences and history.

He studies at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) in Hito Steyerl’s class, which is currently led by Mykola Ridnyi. A joint video work by Osmanović and Al-Najar was shown in the exhibition Mar’a’yeh: A Night’s Journey in 2024 at Künstlerhaus Bethanien.