Fall/winter program 2020/2021

KW Institute for Contemporary Art is pleased to announce its fall/winter program 2020/2021, which focuses on two comprehensive solo exhibitions: German artist Amelie von Wulffen’s first institutional solo exhibition in Berlin and the first European retrospective of the late Brazilian artist Leonilson. While the 11th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art takes over the premises of KW from September 5 to November 1, 2020, KW will open the Pickle Bar in collaboration with Slavs and Tatars as part of this year’s Berlin Art Week and Gallery Weekend. In late fall 2020, KW’s program will continue with the conference VILLEGGIATURA which frames the role of contemporary art within rural gentrification and displacement. Furthermore, a podcast series by Beatrice Gibson and two new moving image productions by Onyeka Igwe and Lin+Lam will be presented online.

Beatrice Gibson
What’s Love Got To Do With It?
September 4, 11, and 18, 2020
Curator: Beatrice Gibson

KW Production Series artist Beatrice Gibson pairs six contemporary poets to discuss the topic of love: CAConrad and LeAnne Howe, Alice Notley and Precious Okoyomon, and Ariana Reines and Sophie Robinson. This three-part podcast series makes sonic space for these poets to share, listen and respond to one another’s work, and features unique compositions by Crystabel Riley and Seymour Wright. More

11th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art
The Crack Begins Within
September 5–November 1, 2020
Curators: María Berríos, Renata Cervetto, Lisette Lagnado, Agustín Pérez Rubio

The slow opening of the 11th Berlin Biennale began a year ago, and has since continued to explore the many cracks we carry, the fissures that keep us apart and those that bring us together. The epilogue, The Crack Begins Within inhabits KW, transforms the venue into an Antichurch, and asks: Can patriarchal violence be purged from our collective bodies? More

KW on location: 
Slavs and Tatars’ Pickle Bar
September 11–13, 2020 
Curators: Kathrin Bentele, Slavs and Tatars

In collaboration with KW, Slavs and Tatars will launch Pickle Bar—a Slavic take on the aperitivo bar. Pickle Bar invites artists Selin Davasse, Shalva Nikvashvili, and Ana Prvački to revisit the Georgian tradition of the Tamada, in which the Master or Mistress of Ceremony of a Georgian meal is well known for drinking rituals, spoken word, and performances. During the chamber drinking ritual, guests will be offered a selection of fermented drinks and bites. More

VILLEGGIATURA
November 7–8, 2020
Curator: Tirdad Zolghadr in collaboration with Marion von Osten

VILLEGGIATURA discusses patterns of rural gentrification and the role of contemporary art within them. Histories of displacement differ from city to city, countryside to countryside. But for all the specificities, the common traits of latter-day land grabs may help plot a common way forward. If art and culture have a contribution to make—what can it be in terms of business as usual, and as a best-case scenario? VILLEGGIATURA addresses both historical backgrounds and strategies of visualization that might make better models possible—technologically, ideologically, financially speaking. More 

Amelie von Wulffen 
November 28, 2020–February 14, 2021
Curator: Anna Gritz 

Berlin-based artist Amelie von Wulffen has long established herself internationally as one of Germany’s most important painters. Since the 1990s, she has created a unique oeuvre that enquires into the historic, economic, and social conditions of painting. Highly self-reflexive, von Wulffen’s practice expands to include the artist herself. She frequently appears in her own work in different guises, interweaving her family’s past with national history and existential questions about a specifically German cultural heritage. The exhibition at KW marks von Wulffen’s first institutional solo show in Berlin and presents a comprehensive body of new commissions among a survey of selected existing works. More

Leonilson
Drawn 1975–1993 
November 28, 2020–February 14, 2021
Curator: Krist Gruijthuijsen 

The late Brazilian artist Leonilson is recognized for his poetic vision during a period of social upheaval within his home country. His work is characterized by a turn to subjectivity, eschewing the rationality of Conceptual Art predominant in the 1970s and rediscovering a “joy of painting” in the years following the end of Brazil’s military dictatorship. The exhibition at KW is the first major retrospective of the artist’s work in Europe and presents a selection of over 250 works, encompassing a broad range of mediums and styles, from early paintings to the introspective embroidery of Leonilson’s last years, providing an overview of his entire oeuvre. More

KW Production Series 2020:
Onyeka Igwe and Lin+Lam
December 12–30, 2020 
Curator: Mason Leaver-Yap

For its third and final year of commissioning, KW Production Series will work with London-based artist and researcher Onyeka Igwe, who explores the physical body and geographical place as sites of cultural and political meaning; and New York-based collaborative duo Lin+Lam—Lana Lin and H. Lan Thao Lam—who draw on their backgrounds in architecture, photography, sculpture, installation and time-based media to grapple with incidents informed by past political narratives. More

Press contact
Karoline Köber
T +49 30 243459 41 / kk [​at​] kw-berlin.de
 

KW Institute for Contemporary Art is institutionally supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Berlin. 

The fall/winter program 2020/2021 of KW Institute for Contemporary Art is funded by and/or in collaboration with: