KYIV BIENNIAL: A BIRD THAT CANNOT LAND

10.06.2026 - 13.09.2026
With Dana Kavelina, Julia Cimafiejeva, Yara Mekawei

Opening: 10.06.2026, 7:00–10:00 pm

On Wednesday, 10.06.26, KW Institute for Contemporary Art will open a chapter of the Kyiv Biennial, an expansive exhibition, live and discursive program that takes place across all floors of the building and throughout the summer months. Amid this landscape, A Bird That Cannot Land aims to open spaces for listening to interconnected pasts and presents, and for rethinking how geographies, histories, and realities are told and perceived. The biennial features over 40 intergenerational and international voices from Berlin and beyond, including BKP alumnae Dana Kavelina, Julia Cimafiejeva, and Yara Mekawei.

Situated in shifting political realities, A Bird That Cannot Land centers on the notion of a “Middle-East-Europe” and its histories of dispute, coloniality, and imperialism. Recurring conflicts reopen the wounds of those preceding them and challenge our sense of shared experience, language, and imagination. By linking post-Soviet Eastern Europe with Central and Southwest Asia, and the Mediterranean, the exhibition and its live and discursive events turn to questions on how we make meaning and experience belonging in times marked by war, uncertainty, and estrangement. Moving through realities where the continuity of meaning is broken, the biennial understands exile in and from the world as a central condition of contemporary life.

Participants: Abdullah Miniawy, Adam Hanieh, Alona Karavai, Anna Ehrenstein and Yara Mekawei, Anna Zvyagintseva, Anton Kats and the Grounded Outer Space People, Assaf Gruber, Aykan Safoğlu, Bulgarian Voices Berlin, Dana Kavelina, Eda Aslan, Farahnaz Sharifi, Fehras Publishing Practices, Flaka Haliti, Geta Brătescu, Gulnur Mukazhanova, Heinali and Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko, Hito Steyerl, Hiwa K, Ihor Tsymbrovsky, Ivan Krastev, Joyce Joumaa, Julia Cimafiejeva, Katarina Gryvul, Lesia Vasylchenko, Lida Abdul, Lucia Kagramanyan, Madina Tlostanova, Majd Abdel Hamid, Mona Hatoum, Nazanin Noori, Neda Saeedi, Nour Sokhon, Oleksiy Radynski, Philipp Goll, Samia Halaby, Saodat Ismailova, Sattar Stas Shärifullá and Ziliä Qansurá, Seyyare – Anatolian Women’s Choir, Stefaniia Bodnia and Jack Dove, Tjan Zaotschnaja, Tolia Astakhishvili, Ulrike Herrmann, Wafaa Saied

Find out more about the live program | discursive program | related events

KUNST-WERKE BERLIN e. V., KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Auguststr. 69, 10117 Berlin

Additional support by the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program, funded by the Federal Foreign Office (AA)

Image credit: Lesia Vasylchenko, “Night Without Shadows and Light Without Rippling of Waves”, 2025. Courtesy the artist © the artist