KOW

OPENING TODAY: MARIO PFEIFER at
A Thousand Times Berlin — The Collection Hamburger Bahnhof
12.06.2026 until further notice

For its 30th anniversary, Hamburger Bahnhof presents its new iteration of the collection in the west wing, focusing on Berlin’s art scene in global dialogue from 1989 to today. Over 70 works by more than 50 artists, including paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs, and video installations, reflect Berlin’s myth of hedonism and subculture in an international context.

PUBLIC PROGRAMME:

JUN 14 at 2 PMpfeifer
OPEN HOUSE. TAGE DER OFFENEN TÜR AT HAMBURGER BAHNHOF
Artist Talk with Charlotte Knaup (Curator Hamburger Bahnhof)

On Sunday, June 14th, the artist Mario Pfeifer and curator Charlotte Knaup will be exchanging about his work 'Again / Noch Einmal' as part of the exhibition 'A Thousand Times Berlin' at the Hamburger Bahnhof’s 30 year ceremony.

The talk will be held in German. Admission is free.

Join us for Mario Pfeifer's open talk this Sunday, June 14th, at the Hamburger Bahnhof Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart.

___
Images:

Mario Pfeifer, 'Again / Noch Einmal', installation views at the 10th Berlin Biennale 'We don’t need another Hero' – Akademie der Künste, curated by Gabi Ngcobo with Nomaduma Rosa Masilela, Serubiri Moses, Thiago de Paula Souza, and Yvette Mutumba, 2018. © Timo Ohler

OPENING TODAY: ANNA EHRENSTEIN & HIWA K at KYIV BIENNIAL — A Bird That Cannot Land
11.06–13.09.2026

The Kyiv Biennial is a nomadic, international project that interweaves artistic, political, and social issues. A Bird That Cannot Land, its chapter at KW, takes shape as an extensive live and discursive program and a large-scale exhibition spanning the entire building, contributing to the biennial’s reflections through contemporary art, sound, and exchange.

PUBLIC PROGRAMME:

FRIDAY, JUN 12 at 7 PM

FROM HERE TO THERE: PRACTICE, DISTANCE AND SELF-POSITIONING
Talk with Julia Ciamafiejeva and Farahnaz Sharifi
Moderated by Azar Mahmoudian

The panel brings together artists and authors to reflect on personal experiences of resettlement and the continuation of artistic practice across changing contexts. Rather than approaching the topic abstractly, the discussion centres on lived experience: how relocation is perceived, processed, and translated into creative work.

SUNDAY, JUN 14 at 6 PM

THE CLOUD IS STILL BALKANIZED
Performance with Yara Mekawei

During the Kyiv Biennial, Anna Ehrenstein will host a hybrid lecture-performance combining video, sound, and hypnotic techniques with Yara Mekawei. Building on The 'Balkanization of the Cloud' (2022), one of Ehrenstein’s earlier works, the performance reflects on how nation-state logics continue to reassert themselves within supposedly borderless digital infrastructures.

KW Curatorial Team:
Sofie Krogh Christensen (Curator)
Linda Franken (Assistant Curator)
Radia Soukni (Exhibition Assistant)

If you are in Berlin, join us for the public events at KW Institute for Contemporary Art with Hiwa K and Anna Ehrenstein.
____
Images:
1) Lesia Vasylchenko, Night Without Shadows and Light Without Rippling of Waves, 2025, courtesy the artist and KW Institute for Contemporary Art.

2) Hiwa K, Julia Ciamafiejeva & Farahnaz Sharifi, courtesy the artists and KW Institute for Contemporary Art.

3) Ehrenstein, Katragjini & Mizarahi, 2022, Nationstate As Instagram Influencer, video still, courtesy the artists and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, and KOW, Berlin.

CURRENTLY ON VIEW: ANNA BOGHIGUIAN 'Weaving Culture' at
Solo show
until 15.08.2026

Curated by Nairi Khatchadourian

Over the course of half a century, Anna Boghiguian has traveled across the four continents, weaving connections between microhistories and the ways in which material cultures are informed by constantly shifting human geographies, while
always drawing on mythologies that inhabit our imaginaries.

After her one-month residency with AHA collective, during which she visited carpet workshops, met with displaced women weavers from Nagorno-Karabagh, and traveled through southern Armenia to the border city of Meghri, a paper to carpet
translation process was initiated. Over the course of nine months, the displaced weavers, together with local dyers, translated 37 drawings created during the diasporic artist’s residency into a rich textile language, using local wool and more
than two hundred dyes. Bringing together displaced women weavers, including those formerly part of the renowned Artsakh Carpet workshop, the project has supported them in re-establishing their practice in Yerevan and in workshops across
nearby villages.

“It is a great opportunity to read what the weavers share about their lives and their experiences, their reactions to my work, and their experiences while weaving,
especially in terms of color”— Anna Boghuiguian.

When in Yerevan, swing by the National Gallery of Armenia to immerse yourself in Anna Boghiguian's threads. And stay tuned for the upcoming Artist Talk by Anna Boghiguian in July.


____
Images:

1,2,4,5,6) “Weaving culture. Anna Boghiguian” exhibition view, courtesy of the artist, AHA collective, and KOW, Berlin. Photo: Sevak Thomasians / AHA collective.

3) Anna Boghiguian, 'Trees Have a Memory', carpet cartoon designed by Artsakh Carpet, courtesy of the artist, AHA collective, and KOW, Berlin.

7) Anna Boghiguian and Nairi Khatchadourian along the Araks River Meghri, Armenia, July 2025, courtesy of the artist, AHA collective, and KOW, Berlin. Photo: Sevak Thomasians.

ARTIST TALK: MARIO PFEIFER at Haus der Kulturen der Welt
HOW TO TRACE THE TIRAILLEURS AS A COLONIAL CONTINUITY IN THE PRESENT
MAY 29, 3:30 PM

Moderated by Can Sungu (Filmic Practices) and Paz Guevara (Exhibition Practices)

WUTAME | CACHÉ, 2026
DCP, Color, Stereo 2.0, 29 min
AS PART OF THE GROUP SHOW 'TIRAILLEURS: TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS' at HKW

Commissioned by HKW and supported by savvy KWATA & the Goethe Institut Cameroon, the video installation WUTAME | CACHÉ interweaves conversations with two Cameroonian men, who embarked for different reasons to Russia and ended up at the frontlines of Russia's invasion war against Ukraine.

Both men returned to their home and share testimonies on their paths, their survival and experience as contemporary tirailleurs. While their identity remains protected for security reasons, their stated experiences reveal how young men are lured into Russia with promises unfulfilled, life threatening and traumatic experiences but hope for dignified future.

A few days after the video's on-site production in Douala in early Feburary 2026, the first newspapers broke stories on fallen, imprisoned and returned tirailleurs in Cameroon. It remains a hidden, controversial an suppressed topic within the Cameroonian society and beyond.

If you are in Berlin, don't miss .pfeifer Artist Talk tomorrow, MAY 29, 3:30PM at HKW.

_____
Images:

1) Mario Pfeiffer, 'Wutame | Caché', 2026, installation view at HKW, 2026, courtesy of the artist, HKW, and KOW, Berlin. Photo: Hanna-Wiedemann.

2,3) Mario Pfeiffer, 'Wutame | Caché', 2026, video still, courtesy of the artist and KOW, Berlin.

4) 'Tirailleurs: Trials and Tribulations', courtesy of HKW, visual: Yukiko.

KOW𝗧𝗔𝗟𝗞: CANDICE BREITZ IN CONVERSATION WITH JOANNA WARSZA
MAY 29, 6:30 PM

KOW is pleased to invite you to a conversation between and

On the occasion of Candice Breitz' current solo exhibition at KOW, 'HOT POTATO', the artist will exchange in dialogue with Joanna Warsza about her newest body of work presented in the gallery.

In the video series 'Dear Esther', Candice Breitz weaves exacting analysis of the political and cultural landscape of contemporary Germany with fever-dream imagery and anecdotal research, drawing an arc between fascisms of the past and fascization in the present. The first film in the series, 'Dear Esther (May 1943)', recalls a formative moment in Esther Bejarano’s early life, setting the tone for the ‘letters’ that follow. It is intended to be viewed along with the film that follows it in the series, 'Dear Esther (15 May 2020)'.

The video work 'Dear Esther' lasts 47 minutes. The gallery opens at 12 pm on Friday.

We kindly encourage you to join us to watch the film before the talk begins at 6:30 that day. Viewing the film after the talk will not be possible.

The conversation will be held in English.

Attendance is free.

_____

CANDICE BREITZ (born in Johannesburg, 1972) is a Berlin-based artist. Her moving image installations have been shown internationally.

JOANNA WARSZA is Hamburg’s city curator (Stadtkuratorin Hamburg). ‘A Song for Esther,’ a concert that has been conceived by Candice Breitz in homage to the late musician and anti-fascist activist Esther Bejarano, was originally commissioned by Warsza within a series of ‘Counter Monuments’ for Hamburg.

A Song for Esther will run at HAU in Berlin for two consecutive nights on 6 JUNE and 7 June.

Tickets are available via https://www.hebbel-am-ufer.de/
_____
Images:

Candice Breitz, 'Dear Esther', 2025, video stills, commissioned by steirischer herbst 2025, courtesy of the artist and KOW, Berlin.

OPENING TOMORROW: CATPC at .museum
The Land of Chocolate Sprinkles. Building a new world together.
Solo show
22.05 — 22.11.2026

What for many people is an everyday product has a darker side: cacao, sugar and palm oil are often produced on plantations where people and nature pay a high price.

The artists of Congolese collective CATPC make art to change that. With the proceeds they buy back exhausted plantation land to plant food forests. This strengthens food security, biodiversity and the restoration of the sacred forest.

The exhibition features 30 chocolate sculptures and a series of embroidered works. The sculptures were originally made from clay and cast in cacao, palm oil and sugar using 3D technology. Each work tells its own story about exploitation, inequality and resistance.

The embroidered works show portraits of resistance fighters and plantation workers from Congo, Haiti, Suriname, Indonesia and Ghana. They are embroidered on the burlap sacks used to transport cacao around the world. Together they form a tribute to their shared struggle against colonial exploitation.

If you are in Amsterdam, don't miss debut on the Amstel opening tomorrow, MAY 22nd, at H'Art Museum.
____
Images:

1) Irene Kanga working on sculpture, video still from 'White Cube', 2020, courtesy of CATPC, IHA, and KOW Berlin.

2) CATPC, 'The Mad Art Collector' by Emery Muhamba, 2020, courtesy of Mondriaan Fund, photo: Peter Tijhuis.

3) CATPC members with White Cube in the background, from left: Olele
Mulela Mabamba, Irène Kanga, Huguette Kilembi, Jérémie Mabiala, Jean
Kawata, Mbuku Kimpala, Ced’art Tamasala and Matthieu Kasiama. Still
from White Cube, Renzo Martens, 2020. Courtesy of CATPC, IHA, and KOW Berlin.

4) CATPC, Resistance Fighter Series: 'Keti Koti, Free man of Suriname' by Alphonse
Bukumba, Jean Kawata, Tantine Mukundu, 2024. Courtesy of CATPC, IHA, and KOW Berlin.

ON VIEW: CANDICE BREITZ
‘Hot Potato’
until 27.06.2026

As calls to untether art from politics proliferate in Germany and beyond, 'Hot Potato' traces the historically fraught relationship between artists and the authorities that preside over them – by means of a series of appropriative homages.

The history of art is abundant with artists who have, in one way or another, created space for political and ethical reflection within their creative practice. Breitz pays tribute to some of them in this exhibition – evoking, borrowing, reproducing and reanimating earlier works and performances by artists and musicians as diverse as Renée Sintenis, Esther Bejarano, John Baldessari, Félix González-Torres, Mark Wallinger and Christoph Schlingensief, with varying degrees of reverence.

Visit us Wed–Sat, 12–6 pm, and immerse yourself in outtake.

____
Images:

Candice Breitz, Hot Potato, installation views at KOW, courtesy of the artist and KOW, Berlin. Photos: Ladislav Zajac.

ARTIST TALK: ANNA EHRENSTEIN IN CONVERSATION WITH ARIANA DONGUSberlin
MAY 03, 2–3 pm

The discussion builds on Ehrenstein's exhibition 'The Language of the Soil', which examines the infrastructures of AI and the working conditions on which they are based.

The project is based on ongoing research and collaborations with digital workers and practitioners, including Richard Mathenge, Mophat Okinyi, and Fasica Berhane, as well as other stakeholders in Nairobi and Cairo.

Instead of portraying AI as autonomous or immaterial, the conversation situates AI systems within existing work networks, colonial histories, extractive processes, and the global platform economy. Ehrenstein and Dongus also reflect on questions of authorship, the political dimensions of AI, and how artistic practice can engage with and challenge these structures.

The author and researcher Yaniya Lee will moderate the discussion.

Join and next Sunday, May 03, for the Artist Talk with Q&A at Fotografiska, Berlin.
____
Images:
1–6) Anna Ehrenstein – The Language of the Soil, Fotografiska Berlin, 2026 © Fotografiska

7) © Anna Ehrenstein & Ariana Dongus