If the Berlin Wind Blows my Flag. The Story of a West Berlin Fellowship

Centrális Galéria, Blinken OSA Archvium 

13.12.2025 – 08.03.2026

Bettina von Arnim, Endre Bálint, Gábor Bódy, Wojciech Bruszewski, Daniel Buren, Timmi Kwaku Davis & Yehudit Yinhar, Agnes Denes,  Ieva Epnere, Wojciech Fangor, György Galántai, Gyula Gulyás, István Haász, Gusztáv Hámos & Katja Pratschke, István Haraszty, Joan Jonas, György Jovánovics, Milan Knížák, Shigeko Kubota, László Lakner, Dóra Maurer, Hajnal Németh, Tanja Ostojić, Robert Rehfeldt, Josef Robakowski, Alicja Rogalska, Zofia Kulik (KwieKulik), Sonya Schönberger, Shelly Silver, Charles Simonds, Petr Štembera, Endre Tót, Dominika Trapp, Ben Vautier, Jiří Valoch, Ryszard Waśko, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt

Following the 2023/24 exhibition If the Berlin Wind Blows My Flag. Art and Internationalization before the Fall of the Wall in Berlin, which examined the history and politics of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program (BKP), a new iteration of the project will open in December 2025 at Galeria Centralis of the Blinken OSA Archivum in Budapest. Under the title Shifting Perspectives: If the Berlin Wind Blows my Flag. The Story of a West Berlin Fellowship, this continuation of the project extends the critical reflection on the cultural and institutional dynamics of the Cold War to a Central and Eastern European context.

Drawing on the archives of both the BKP and the Archivum, the exhibition investigates the interplay between political institutions and artistic practices beyond a Western framework. It focuses on the role of funding bodies like the Ford Foundation, the International Association for Cultural Freedom, and the DAAD in fostering dialogue between Eastern European and Western artists and intellectuals. More than thirty Hungarian cultural practitioners—artists, writers, composers, film directors—such as György Jovánovics, György Galántai, László Lakner, Endre Tót and István Harasztÿ, participated in the BKP before 1989, indicating the extent of cross-border artistic engagement despite geopolitical divides.

The exhibition builds on the project’s strategy of exposing gaps and omissions in institutional narratives. Particular attention is given to the contributions and visibility of women artists—linking pioneering figures such as Bettina von Arnim, Dóra Maurer, and Zofia Kulik with contemporary perspectives by Dominika Trapp, Tanja Ostojić, and Ieva Epnere. It further highlights female artists from state-socialist countries, whose work would have been equally worthy of support within the framework of the BKP due to its relevance and quality. By revisiting artistic practices and forms of representation in archival narratives, the exhibition seeks to reimagine the cultural geography of the period and challenge hierarchies of recognition.

Shifting Perspectives also traces alternative art networks that transcended ideological boundaries through common artistic approaches, such as the Mail Art movement or the Workshop of the Film Form (WFF) in Łódź. A case study of Jürgen Schweinebraden’s EP Galerie in East Berlin, which connected artists from both sides of the Iron Curtain—including Dóra Maurer, Jiří Valoch, and Charles Simonds—serves as a model for artistic solidarity and civic engagement.

The Budapest edition will be complemented by collaborations with contemporary artists who engaged directly with the archives as artistic material: Sonya Schönberger, Alicja Rogalska, Timmi Kwaku Davis, and Yehudit Yinhar developed new works that question mechanisms of exclusion, the politics of memory, and the ethics of care and recognition.

Through this dialogue between archives, generations of artists, and audiences, Shifting Perspectives aims to articulate new narratives of transcultural attitudes—ones that emerge from shared histories and the potential of art to envision forms of solidarity across time and space. 

Curated by Nóra Lukács and Melanie Roumiguière

Centrális Galéria
Blinken OSA Archivum
Arany János utca 32
1051 Budapest

Picture credit: Endre Tót, Berlin TÓTalJOYS, West Berlin, 1979, bw-photography, photo: Herta Paraschin