Titled ‘passing the fugitive on’, the exhibition opens this June across four Berlin venues, presenting more than 170 works by over 60 artists
KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 2025, Image: Raisa Galofre
The 13th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art has announced its title: passing the fugitive on. Curated by Zasha Colah, the Biennale opens to the public on June 14, 2025, with a preview for press on June 12 and 13.
This edition unfolds across four venues in the city: KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Sophiensæle, Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, and a former courthouse on Lehrter Straße in Berlin-Moabit. With more than 170 works by over 60 artists, the exhibition weaves together diverse geographical and political contexts through new commissions and existing works.
The title passing the fugitive on suggests art’s capacity to evade and resist systems of lawful violence, persecution, and militarisation. It indicates that artworks can convey messages and histories that permeate bodies, voices, and spaces—even under duress—and be shared, circulated, and preserved. The Biennale thus becomes a space of transmission: visitors are invited not only to witness but also to carry the messages on, mouth to mouth until they materialise anew.
Zasha Colah describes the exhibition as a call to action: a place where individual imagination may suddenly become collective. It’s a moment of unpredictability—when whispered knowledge, performative acts, or oral stories converge to create a shared experience. passing the fugitive on refers not only to the artworks’ subjects but also to their forms of expression, many of which defy the conventions of static display. Works take shape in the ephemeral, through performance, speech, ritual, or action.
This emphasis on orality, embodiment, and live transmission means that art speaks directly to audiences—in the form of theatrical stagings, spoken word, performance lectures, tribunals, commemorative city walks, and even acts of humour or stand-up. Through these immediate encounters, a powerful complicity can emerge between artist and viewer, making the artwork a site of both resistance and intimacy.
The exhibition highlights a range of fugitive aesthetics—those that find ways to exist and speak despite hostile conditions. Across the four venues, visitors will encounter practices that confront power and create alternative systems of knowledge and memory.
The 13th Berlin Biennale runs from June 14 to September 14, 2025. For more information, please visit their website.
