Heimsuchungen – EN Bärenzwinger Berlin

Furore

with
Nina Paszkowski

Graphic: Nora Keilig

Exhibition

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

Nina Paszkowski

Nina Paszkowski lives and works in Cologne. In her artistic practice, she engages with themes such as desire, power, and the interdependence of living beings. She works with ceramics and paper, developing spatial installations that examine the tension between individuality and interconnectedness.

Her installations often consist of large-scale paper cut-outs, for which she partly produces the paper herself, as well as ceramic sculptures. Both bodies of work address notions of fragility and permeability, treating these not as fixed conditions but as shifting states within spatial and relational structures.

Prologue

Within the context of this year’s theme, “Hauntings,” the Bärenzwinger’s artistic program unfolds in a four-part series. Over four weekends throughout the year, from May 15 to October 18, the prologue and the three acts explore past places, people, and things, taking the absence seriously—that which is no longer tangible as absences that nevertheless have an effect, and as a question with no simple answer. Caught between conservation and transformation, the Bärenzwinger monument becomes the backdrop and stage for an artistic exploration of how to deal with loss in light of an uncertain future.

Inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies (1922), a program of performances, workshops, readings, and listening sessions takes shape. Written over a period of ten years, Rilke traces in these elegies a quest that begins with an invocation of the absent and leads to the question of how to deal with what is missing. How can memories be appropriately preserved and carried safely through time? Rilke’s answer is not a solution, but a movement: Memories do not survive through preservation, but by entering new contexts and changing in the process—thus clearing the way for what is not yet there. While for Rilke there is no definitive end to the Elegies, the program sets the course for the 10th anniversary of the Bärenzwinger as a community gallery in 2027.

May 15, 2026

With the prologue on May 15, the Bärenzwinger opens its annual program, “Heimsuchungen.” Conceived as an invocation into the void, it marks the beginning and sets the tone for the year’s interpretive cycle, which, drawing on Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies, is understood as a search: Here, remembering appears not as mere preservation, but as a transformation into new contexts.

The performance Der Puma ist kein deutsches Tier by Luciano Mazzo at 6:00 p.m. marks the beginning of this movement.

Luciano Mazzo

Luciano Mazzo is a Chilean artist living in Stuttgart. He earned a bachelor’s degree in theater studies from the Universidad de Chile and completed his master’s degree in fine arts at the ABK Stuttgart, focusing on performative languages and decolonial approaches, with support from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. His primary focus is on Latin American studies, where he explores how personal experiences and emotions contribute to understanding political structures and macrostructures of power.

He works primarily in the fields of performance, video art, and installation, combining elements of his background in acting and writing. His works thus feature a strong textual component as well as a physical presence, expanding the possibilities of the body through the creation of music, the execution of complex movements, and direct connection with the audience through touch.

In 2025, he won the ABK Performance Art Prize. He is currently preparing a solo exhibition for the Ludwigsburger Kunstverein, a residency at Artist Unlimited (Bielefeld), and a work for the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.

KTTP, Open House: I´d like to talk aboout art, but I have to go to work, 2025

Weirder, Taller, Uglier, Louder – Feral Possible, around Karl-Marx-Straße and Carrer Cobalt

with
Ran Zhang
Lolo & Sosaku

Grafik: Tessa Curran

Exhibition

19/02 – 10/05/2026

The exhibition is the third part of “Louder, Taller, Uglier, Weirder – Learning from Weeds / Von Unkraut lernen”, a curatorial project consisting of four exhibitions and a series of events we call sprouts, which appear as we grow and move forward.

Guest curation: Anaïs Senli, Lorena Juan, Sonia Fernández Pan, Sylvia Sadzinski

Events

18/2/2026, from 6 PM
Opening

11/4/2026, 3 PM
Exhibition Tour
with artist Ran Zhang, artist/curator Anaïs Senli and curator Sonia Fernández Pan

Further events will be published here: www.louderugliertallerweirder.net

Ran Zhang

Ran Zhang makes stories and objects out of organic micrographs, eye floaters, motives of motor and visual proteins. She likes to discover the unplanned space between biological knowledge and personal experience, and find shapes for the personalisation of science all around her. She likes to walk around Neukölln, documenting romantic scenes among the things left behind.

Lolo & Sosaku

Lolo & Sosaku work with objects, sounds, images, movements and situations of friction between them all to create threshold experiences. Materiality, mechanics and mysticism help them to unveil the hidden energies and forces that exist in our shared life with technology and obsolete devices. During the many hours spent in the studio, they often deal with the entropy of things. They have a soft spot for noise, metal, light, and water.

Anaïs Senli

Anaïs Senli is an artist and independent curator. Starting from the idea of otherness as a battlefield, she likes to think about the porous relationships that connect and differentiate us, about what makes us human, alien or even hybrids.

Lorena Juan

Lorena Juan is a researcher and curator based in Berlin and Freiburg. She reads about geological phases of planet earth before sleeping and enjoys studying the weedy entanglements of language.

Sonia Fernández Pan

Sonia Fernández Pan writes, curates, makes podcasts, and moves in migrant rhythms. Weediness is a common feature of almost everything she likes. Berlin is where she spends most of her time, sheltering with friends and strangers in times of censorship, official lies and complicit silence.

Sylvia Sadzinski

Sylvia Sadzinski curates, researches, writes, teaches and lectures. Although her last name means the planter in Polish, she doesn’t enjoy gardening — but she loves creating spaces and moments of coming together.