Neue Nationalgalerie: Embracing the Uneasiness

Neue Nationalgalerie is presenting the winner of the Preis der Nationalgalerie, the acclaimed Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan.

NIGHT marks the artist's first major solo exhibition in the country, bringing the German public into direct contact with his unique and unsettling practice. Cattelan is known for his distinctive approach to art, which uses irony, exaggeration, and restraint to confront fundamental themes such as religion, authority, childhood, and collective trauma.

This sense of discomfort becomes a new means to read and understand societal norms, pushing the boundaries a little further. The exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie will present seminal, iconic pieces from the past, such as Him (2001) and Novecento (1997), while holding at its centre a new site-specific installation conceived for the Mies van der Rohe building. The title of the exhibition itself evokes a liminal space between history and remembrance, entering a realm where images and symbols are actively negotiated.

Soft Power Festival: Everything is Connected

Anahita Sadighi Galerie aims to celebrate art in all its forms with the Soft Power Festival, a transdisciplinary event taking place at Haus der Visionäre that intersects art, music, and social dialogue. As a Special Project of Berlin Art Week, Soft Power gathers under one roof an exhibition of numerous visual artists across various media alongside a dense programme of DJ sets, concerts, performances, and conversations. The festival's title refers to the ability to exert influence through culture, community, and persuasion rather than economic pressure and violence, linking philosophical theories to the critical issues of our past and present.

The intertwining of these diverse media offers a compelling way to resonate with different audiences, reminding us once again how all art forms – and all of us – are interconnected. The festival will feature acclaimed creatives from Berlin and across the world, including visual artist Diane Severin Nguyen and icons of the electronic music scene like Fred P, paving the way toward potential solutions for the challenges of our time.

Fluentum: Roots and Walls

With A Bug’s Life, Fluentum presents the compelling work of Iranian artist Arash Nassiri. The show marks his first major institutional solo exhibition in Berlin and connects the artist’s eponymous film with recent works created specifically for the occasion. A Bug’s Life follows the surreal journey of an insect inside an opulent Beverly Hills mansion. The building it explores is a rare example of a specific architectural movement brought to the US by Iranian immigrants around the time of the 1979 revolution.

This framework opens up a powerful space for the artist to examine fundamental themes such as migration, displacement, aspiration, the erasure of history, and the complex meaning of the term ‘home’. To accompany the exhibition, Fluentum will also publish a book dedicated to the development of A Bug’s Life and its ramifications across all spheres – from our complicated past to our unsettling present.

Galerie Buchholz: Between Light and Darkness

Galerie Buchholz is showcasing another first exhibition in Germany, celebrating the work of Canadian artist Alix Cléo Roubaud (1952-1983). The late artist was a visionary in the field of photography, developing a practice that was at once experimental and radical. Working in the darkroom, she investigated various printing techniques, including multiple exposures, dodging and burning, and the use of what she called “her pencil of light”. 

At the heart of this exhibition lies her major series Si quelque chose noir (If something black), considered the highest point of her beautiful body of work. Her technical experiments cross into the realm of thought, meditating on the finitude of existence and inviting us, from up close, to do the same.

SOCIÉTÉ: Tackling the System 

For Berlin Art Week, SOCIÉTÉ is presenting Sugarshack by American artist Salim Green. The exhibition marks another journey, one that takes us from Waterloo, Iowa, the city where the artist's paternal family lived, into unexpected and intimate spaces. Using dislocation, unsettlement, and diving into the cracks of narrative, Green prompts us to reflect on relational politics, community, and the Black experience.

Of particular note is his use of the Dark Forest Theory, a sci-fi concept explaining how civilizations survive by hiding from hostile forces, as a metaphor for Black survival. His powerful imagery relies on abstract means to explore how individuals navigate surveillance, state control, and public exposure, tackling themes that are now as compelling as ever.

PalaisPopulaire: Other Perspectives

PalaisPopulaire will present the Deutsche Bank “Artist of the Year”, Lucia Tallová. Born in Bratislava in 1985, the artist gained international recognition following her participation in the Lyon Biennale. Her practice is based on a poetic use of collage techniques, merging found objects, painting, photography and installation. 

The exhibition, titled Moving Clouds, addresses in both an intimate and universal way multiple societal issues, giving resonance to forgotten female perspectives, confronting the tension between modernity and its impact on nature, and reflecting on themes like loss and love, hope and despair – capturing the fragility of memory within our accelerated digital present.

n.b.k. & Schinkel Pavillon: Exploring the In-Between

For Berlin Art Week, n.b.k. and Schinkel Pavillon decided to join forces and confront a defining issue of our era: the complex dichotomy between East and West and its ongoing impact on our present. Through the exhibition Projections onto the East, they investigate their ideological attributions, the cultural identification they represent and the cultural constructs that sustain them, examining the real-life political consequences they produce. Both venues will feature international artists, scholars, and writers through a dynamic presentation of historical works, contemporary art, and site-specific interventions.

The new work for the n.b.k. facade will be a creation of the legendary collective Guerrilla Girls. For more than 40 years, the Guerrilla Girls have used irony, slogans, and anonymity to expose gender and race inequalities in both the art scene and the world at large. The work they will present for the occasion will continue to address viewers and passersby, underlining the imbalance between women artists and female nudity in local collections, once again raising a needed awareness and pushing the conversation forward.

At the same time, n.b.k. Showroom will host an exhibition on the work of director and writer Christoph Hochhäusler. His practice is also anchored in the tension and the liminal space between reality and illusion, the seen and unseen, distance and proximity. His observational eye invites us on a journey across his career, from his movies, notebooks, and storyboards to his latest project, Das Paradies vertreibt uns, created specifically for the occasion.

Between Bridges: The Personal is Political

Between Bridges is a non-profit exhibition space and foundation established in 2006 by acclaimed photographer Wolfgang Tillmans. For Berlin Art Week, they present Love is the work by Rachel Seidu, a Nigerian artist whose practice is embedded in exploring queer identity and its multi-layered intimacies within her home country. 

Through both film and photography, she combines conceptual art with a documentary approach, building a visual archive of queer existence. Navigating the space between the personal and the universal, her work confronts the violence experienced by the community in different forms, while leaving room for hope and beauty. Her practice poignantly invites us to reflect on belonging, self-determination, and the strenuous freedom to live authentically.

POSITIONS Berlin Art Fair: Connecting the Dots

For its thirteenth edition, POSITIONS Berlin Art Fair will present 96 galleries from around 20 countries in the historic hangars of Berlin-Tempelhof Airport. The fair collects a diverse selection of important positions from the art world and brings them all together, stimulating dialogue and facilitating new discoveries. This year’s special focus will be on galleries from Türkiye. 

Highlighting the significance of Turkish culture in both Germany and Europe, and its vital role as a bridge between the continents, POSITIONS will present a curated selection of Turkish galleries, and celebrate their multifaceted art scene. From Berlin to the rest of the world and back, the fair will once again provide a unique and intense programme of exhibitions, talks, dinners and ceremonies.

Berlin celebrates art once a year, and this year’s Art Week programme seems to be doing that in the most poignant way. The word ‘celebrate’ comes from the Latin root to describe a crowd, and today more than ever, the crowd should include everyone. At the same time, to celebrate means to remember together, and this is what we should keep in mind, connecting once again and overcoming the polarization dividing us. As Berliners know too well, partying is a serious business and should be treated as such. Don’t miss the chance to visit these inspiring exhibitions and see where this journey takes you.