The 2025 Berlin Biennale Is Gratingly Evasive

In the days leading up to the 13th Berlin Biennale, I heard two things about it: that everyone knows it’s “cursed” and that no one ever remembers it’s happening. “Reviewing the Berlin Biennale is a poisoned chalice I refused,” an editor told me. “I just don’t think about it,” an artist said. “It’s sad.” Although I’ve been in town for every iteration since 2014, it’s true that I had never been, and I wouldn’t have thought about it either, except that a controversial subject that no one cares about is not the worst writing assignment. (A controversial subject that everyone cares about is.)

My ex-boyfriend Jeffrey had also taken a wincing swig from the cup of German contemporary art writing gigs, and so, fearmongered into showing up early by urging emails, we arrived at the Sophiensaele eagerly anticipating what every other journalist—as well as well-meaning cynics who like to watch what are at this point non-stories about the disturbed politics of this country’s culture sphere unfold through outraged social media posts—was eagerly anticipating: the lengths to which these recipients of German government funding would go to avoid talking about the genocide in Palestine.

Most of the press conference was boring, but as artists participating in the show—whose names had not been announced in advance, presumably to stanch controversy—slowly trickled in from their flights and trains to sit alongside the biennial’s organizers, we angled ourselves toward the Q+A. Was this not an attempt at manipulation, daring us to what-about Gaza when there were Burmese people sitting right there? Were the Balkans not tragic enough for us? Several people spoke, including the beleaguered curator, Zasha Colah, who was born in Mumbai and works frequently with artists from Myanmar.

After about 45 minutes, with gratitude sufficiently expressed and rambling narratives concluded, the director of the German Federal Cultural Foundation asked in a nervous performance of openness if there were any questions; as she was about to adjourn, a Stefan speed-walked to the microphone. Stefan did his job: His questions were all related to what he admirably referred to as the genocide in Gaza. Had any of the invited artists refused to participate in the show, in keeping with Strike Germany’s “call to international culture workers to strike from German cultural institutions”? One did, yes, and Colah respected their decision; some of the many persecuted “friends” Colah referred to throughout her doomed attempt at self-exoneration were in fact involved with the Strike Germany campaign. As for the third part of Stefan’s question—had Colah experienced any “state repression by the German government in light of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and German support for it?”—Colah was direct. “I haven’t,” she said, “and they wouldn’t dare.” Wouldn’t they? After uttering the magic words “genocide is a legal term,” she said she “face[s] many repressions” but “would not call it state repression.” OK.

Afterward, a friend’s requisite tut-tutting at the curator’s evasive cowardice did not shake my sense that, as far as toeing the line of commentary acceptable to state actors, Colah’s “position,” as they say in the German art world, was more precariously balanced than some. This mode of aggressive anti-acknowledgment proved to be one of her organizing principles. As Jeffrey later wrote in e-flux, “Once one embraces the absences that propel the elisions, dissent, and black humor that structure the exhibition, they begin to appear everywhere.”

The title of this biennial was “passing the fugitive on,” a phrase that means very little in either English or German (das flüchtige weitergeben). Weirdly, the theme was also “the fox,” or “foxing,” which doesn’t just mean to be cunning but also describes the deterioration and discoloration of books and printed materials. We counted the foxes that appeared in the works by the more than 60 artists in the show; I can’t remember how many there were now, but there was at least one fox work in each of the biennial’s four venues, which were all within walking distance of each other in central Berlin. Attempts to interpret the biennial’s dual themes yielded more cynicism: A fox, easy enough, is a trickster, sneaky, sexily wily, but also cute, which did describe many of the works in the show. To “pass the fugitive on” might signal that the exhibition sees itself engaging in a kind of samizdat, as if smuggling views seen as dangerous into public view, transforming visitors into harborers of fugitives themselves. Or, it might mean making the refugee someone else’s problem. Regardless, the process of distribution—of passing things on—whether through traveling art exhibitions or by word of mouth, inevitably leads to degradation, of both the message and often the medium too. Ultimately, we agreed the phrase was another example of “international art English,” which eschews making sense in favor of making money, or, in the case of these presumably unprofitable works, making audiences less skeptical than assholes like Jeffrey and me feel intimidated and deferential in response to their inability to understand (which, in a different context, might also translate to making money).

A more straightforward, and generous, takeaway is that there is of course more than enough war in the world to go around. On one hand, I don’t believe that every single work of art, event, or public figure needs to address the defining tragedy of our time—the West’s profligate support of Israel’s annihilation of Palestine. The result would be, among other things, counterproductive, and sap of their power the relentless images of death and suffering we already see every day. Besides, the regurgitation of certain protest clichés only wears down the righteous and irritates the unconvinced. On the other hand, this particular biennial’s theme, once you get past the stupid framing, is, basically, state repression and genocide. Because one could not but think of Gaza, a major effect of its relative absence in the exhibition—and more specifically the fact that it apparently could not be acknowledged directly—was to make other conflicts and atrocities seem less important by comparison, which I assume was not intentional.

Nevertheless, the curatorial approach was very educational. This is a show that often relies on wall texts, which I don’t mind because I like to read. If you are like the younger generation and prefer AI-assisted homework, there is an enlarged (and short!) bibliography hanging from the ceiling of the attic space in the main venue, KW, as part of Sawangwongse Yawnghwe’s 2025 installation, Joker’s Headquarters. Gesamtkunstwerk as a Practical Joke (C’est le Premier Vol de L’Aigle). “A Palestinian!” Jeffrey cried ironically as he read the list, the first acknowledgment of Palestine we’d seen that day. (It was Edward Said, listed not once but twice.)

Ignoring this piece, which was neither smart nor interesting nor beautiful, I liked much more in the biennial than I expected to. The Burmese group Panties for Peace, whose loud outfits at the press conference made sense once you saw their antic videos and digital works from the late 2000s, has protested Myanmar’s military junta through confrontational satire; among other things, they mailed women’s underwear to top officials, as well as to Burmese embassies around the world. (In Burmese culture, the wall text explains, a man’s sense of honor and power may crumble if he touches women’s underwear.) Jeffrey and I later regretted mocking the group’s name as we had pored over the list of participating artists before seeing their works; they were actually really good. (The large bra across the room from Panties for Peace, produced by the Argentinian collective Las Chicas del Chancho y el Corpiño led by Kikí Roca, was not spared our ire, though one friend said she found comfort in standing behind it, as if she were a breast. That’s not my thing.)

I also liked: 1) Mila Panić’s comedy-club installation, Big Mouth (2025), in which blunt phrases like world war cup! and remember when art was humble? are carved into tabletops and the backs of chairs; 2) Sarnath Banerjee’s Critical Imagination Deficit (2025), a set of bright, almost graphic novelesque works on paper and sound that illustrate an uneasy daily life in India; 3) Han Bing and the Kashmiri Cabbage Walker, of which it was nice to be reminded; 4) Htein Lin’s Fly (2005), which the artist first conceived and performed in prison, shot in a single take on low-resolution footage here; and 5) videos by the Canadian artist Stacy Douglas, one of which involved a news anchor explaining the word Kafka-esque.

AT HIS CLOSED TRIAL at the former courthouse in the Berlin neighborhood of Moabit in 1916, the Socialist revolutionary Karl Liebknecht said, “Leave this comedy, where everything, including even the decision, has been prepared beforehand.” He was being sentenced to four years and one month in prison for preliminary high treason; he had organized an antiwar demonstration and criticized the government. This courthouse was the least conveniently located (but most interesting) venue hosting the biennial; in its very back corner, a new video work, From Heaven High (2025), by German artist Simon Wachsmuth, attempted to justify, or maybe just represent, the evasions that had come before. Drawing on John Heartfield and Rudolf Schlichter’s contribution to Berlin’s First International Dada Art Fair in 1920, the film is divided into three parts. In Heartfield and Schlichter’s sculpture, Prussian Archangel (1920), a dummy military officer with a pig’s face hung from the ceiling wearing a sash that read vom himmel hoch, da komm ich her—a song attributed to Martin Luther, repurposed by Dadaists as a rallying cry against war. A sign hanging from the pig-soldier’s waist said in German: in order to understand this work, one must wear a full backpack to tempelhofer feld and perform twelve hours of field exercises.

The Dada duo was charged with defamation of the German army. In Wachsmuth’s video, the pig-soldier performs his exhausting task, but it is in the third act that the artist really makes his point. A circular interview between the pig-soldier and a judge in formal court apparel renders absurd Germany’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza; a cutting reference to the Staatsräson, the German justification for its support of Israel, came as a surprise, as did a “Who’s on First?”–style bit about how the pig-soldier got there. “From the river, over the mountain, to the sea,” he says, to the judge’s frustration: but which river? They have names! While Wachsmuth sidesteps the ritualized comedy of meek resistance followed by condemnation on both sides that leads to nothing, it isn’t as if there is anywhere else to go from here, either. “Weren’t you in the army?” the judge asks. “Of course,” the pig replies, “but I was just parading.”

“Why lie,” the pig continues, “when the truth is so cheap?”

SITUATED ON THE SPREE between the Biennale venues was another exhibition that could be considered both cursed and underacknowledged. On furlough for a limited time at the Bode Museum was Paul Klee’s 1920 painting Angelus Novus (aka the “Angel of History,” after the high-flown analysis of the work that appears in Walter Benjamin’s 1940 essay “On the Concept of History”). Several times I informed local Benjamin-heads much more dedicated than I that the delicate little monoprint had come to town. They were shocked, both that it was here and that no one had told them. Following its flight from Klee to Benjamin’s collection to the Bibliothèque Nationale via Bataille to Adorno during and after World War II, the Angel rarely leaves the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where it has been since 1987, after its previous owner, Benjamin’s friend and frequent correspondent, Gershom Scholem, died.

Inoculated against the potential propagandistic element of the exhibition, my friends and I took our pilgrimages seriatim. To reach the angel, on a high floor and close to its rightful home in the clouds, you have to follow ugly signs that look as if they’re advertising a local author’s book launch, and go through doors that look like those designated for deliveries and caterers. The stairwells are hospital-like. When my companion—not an ex this time, though he’s also good-looking—and I finally emerged in the small exhibition space, laughing and feeling slightly illegal, there were only a handful of other people there.

I have never been a fan of Klee, and I learned about the Frankfurt School too late in life (approximately age 21) to have developed a sentimental attachment to the angel that many of my friends have. Actually, I have trolling-ly—foxily?—referred to the work as a cartoon. Low expectations may not produce revolutions, but they do leave room for the pleasant surprise. Mechanical reproductions of the angel don’t show its texture—or its “aura”—and apparently no one realized its literal depth until 2015, when the artist R.H. Quaytman discovered that Klee had layered his picture over a 19th-century print of a portrait of Martin Luther. This was somewhat mind-blowing, and it should tempt anyone with a passing knowledge of Benjamin to add a mischievously literal reinterpretation to his essay on the work. “Where we perceive a chain of events,” Benjamin writes, the angel “sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet…. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.” What if the storm behind the angel were … the famous antisemite Martin Luther? This is why you should always read wall texts, if not the writing on the wall.