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 – 4/5/2025

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, Finissage 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 Compassion«

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

(* 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.

(* 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.

(* 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.

(* 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.