Kyiv Perennial 

February 23 - June 9, 2024, Berlin

Full program here.

Kyiv Perennial opens in Berlin from February 23–25, 2024, symbolically marking the 10th anniversary of the Maidan Revolution and the 10th year of the Russian war against Ukraine. It is a continuation of the pan-European edition of the Kyiv Biennial 2023, which took place in several Ukrainian and EU cities. The Berlin edition is funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation) and will be organized in cooperation with the Institute of East European Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. A multi-part exhibition and an extensive program of events span four venues: nGbK’s two locations on Alexanderplatz and in Hellersdorf, Between Bridges, and Prater Galerie.

The public program begins ahead of the opening with a keynote by historian Timothy Snyder on Friday, February 16, at nGbK am Alex.

The exhibition commences the following week with a three-day opening weekend: On Friday, February 23, Kyiv Perennial opens at nGbK am Alex. Ukrainian musician Heinali will perform tracks from his latest album KYIV ETERNAL. On Saturday, February 24, the second part of the exhibition opens at Between Bridges, and on Sunday, February 25, the third part opens at nGbK’s Hellersdorf location, station urbaner kulturen, with presentations by Leon Kahane and Christina Werner. The fourth part of the exhibition opens with a symposium organized by Prater Galerie in May 2024.

A discursive program with weekly events accompanies the exhibition throughout March and April. On February 29, The Reckoning Project, an initiative by international and Ukrainian reporters, analysts, and researchers, presents its documentation of Russian war crimes based on verified witness testimonies.

On March 9, almost to the day two years after the Russian airstrike on the Mariupol Drama Theater, one of the worst atrocities committed by Russia during the current war, the Center for Spatial Technologies introduces its work A Сity Within a Building, presenting it in its entirety for the first time after two years of research. Through hours of interviews with survivors of the attack, the joint research project with the Berlin-based group Forensis reassembles the living world of the theater, where more than 1,000 people had sought refuge at the time of the bombing.

On March 16, a panel discussion with literary scholar Epp Annus, historian Franziska Davies, and researcher Darya Tsymbalyuk reverses the discourse of decolonization from the West towards Europe’s East with an eye on the post-Soviet and post-socialist context, where the history of Russian and German colonial projects intersect. In another panel on March 23, researcher and curator Kateryna Iakovlenko, writer Yassin al-Haj Saleh, and historian Jan Tomasz Gross share perspectives on recurring experiences of displacement, from World War II to the war in Syria and Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Accompanying the exhibition and public program, a poster project draws attention to Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine and contextualizes it as a war within and against Europe. The artists Pavel Brăila, Uliana Bychenkova, Experimental Jetset, Marina Naprushkina, Aliona Solomadina, and Wolfgang Tillmans were invited to create one poster each with the leading question: What will happen to Europe if the war against Ukraine continues for ten more years? Half of the print-run of the posters will be flyposted in Berlin and the other half will be available for free at the different locations of Kyiv Perennial.