Kyiv Biennial – A Bird That Cannot Land

The Kyiv Biennial is a nomadic, international project that interweaves artistic, political and social issues. For its tenth anniversary in 2025, it took place throughout Europe and included a series of exhibitions and events, including at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the M HKA in Antwerp, the Dnipro Center for Contemporary Culture, the Dovzhenko Centre in Kiev and the Lentos Art Museum in Linz. The works and themes presented at the various venues form the basis for A Bird That Cannot Land, the chapter of the Biennale taking place at KW. This consists of an extensive live program and a large-scale exhibition that extends across the entire building and expands the reflections of the Biennale through contemporary art, sound and discourse.

Against the backdrop of growing conflicts and changing political realities, A Bird That Cannot Land focuses on the concept of a "Middle-East Europe" and its colonial and imperial histories. By expanding the scope of the Kyiv Biennial and linking post-Soviet Europe with the Baltic states, Central and Southwest Asia, and the Mediterranean, the exhibition, together with its live and discursive programs, aims to create spaces in which the intertwined pasts and presents become audible. The way in which geographies, histories and realities are told and perceived is to be reflected anew.

The exhibition shows works from the traveling 6th Kyiv Biennial, supplemented by new works produced especially for Berlin. The extensive live program deals with notions of memory, uprooting and belonging and focuses on relational and body-based practices of transnational artists from Berlin's diasporic communities.

Curatorial team of KW:

Curator: Sofie Krogh Christensen
Assistant curator: Linda Franken
Live curator: Lorena Juan
Assistant Live Curator: Nikolas Brummer

Extended Curatorial Team:

Emma Enderby, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin
Vasyl Cherepanyn, Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC)
Serge Klymko, Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC)
Magda Lipska, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
Nav Haq, M HKA - Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp
Sarah Jonas, Lentos Art Museum, Linz