12.06.2025 –
22.06.2025
10 YEARS – 10 DAYS! Kunsthaus Dahlem Anniversary Festival
This year, Kunsthaus Dahlem celebrates its 10th anniversary. 10 YEARS – 10 DAYS! we have named the festival that will take place between 12 and 22 June this summer. Pop-up installations, performances, workshops, and much more are coming from the artists who have worked with us over the years, as well as numerous new national and international guests.
Full Anniversary Festival programme (PDF, bilingual: DE / EN):
10 Jahre Kunsthaus Dahlem – Festivalprogramm
Detailed descriptions of the events will be published throughout May in the Calendar section of the website.
All anniversary events are free of charge for all visitors.
About the Project
Kunsthaus Dahlem will celebrate its tenth anniversary in June 2025. As an exhibition venue, Kunsthaus Dahlem is dedicated to the art of postwar modernism and the critical examination of (art) history during the National Socialist era. It is located in the former state studio of Arno Breker, one of the most highly paid and frequently commissioned sculptors of the National Socialist regime. After the Second World War, the building served for several decades as a studio house for artists from both Germany and abroad.
This multiplicity of uses and historical inscriptions has inspired us to forgo a large anniversary exhibition and instead offer the space for ten days as a platform for projection and interaction. During this time, the exhibition halls will remain largely empty and will be activated only temporarily through artistic interventions. For its anniversary, Kunsthaus Dahlem aims to present itself as a place where remembrance is kept alive – shaped collaboratively with various participants and the public in the context of current questions about the present and the future.
Thematically, we offer a recapitulation of what has been, interactive engagement with the present, and a forward-looking, even utopian vision of the future. In doing so, we confront the question of what a museum can – and should – be in the future, and what role a critical awareness of history plays in that process.
We have been supported in this endeavour by numerous artists, curators, and collaborators, whom we would like to introduce below.
Assaf Gruber and Friederike von Rauch have created new artistic works for this special occasion. The Berlin Universität der Künste (University of the Arts), which is also celebrating an anniversary this year, will use the space for one day to host artistic interventions by Jenny Brockmann, Nina Rhode, and Matthias Noell. Jason Kittner and Meret Schmiese, graduates of the specialized Class of Spatial Design and Exhibition Design at the UdK Berlin, will use an additional day for their artistic exploration and interpretation of the space.
Artists and curators from Croatia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Mexico, and the United Kingdom will travel to Berlin to present their work and the (art) history of their respective countries – particularly since 1945 – through lectures and workshops. Participants include Jessica Ostrowicz (UK); Munara Abdukakharova, Cholpon Alamanova, and Aleksandra Filatova (Kyrgyz Republic); Sary Haddad de Chedraui, Ana Hernández López, Izaira López Sánchez, Daniel Rendón Farfán, and Greta de León (Mexico); Eduardo Barroso Neto (Brazil); and Mariana Pende (Croatia). What unites them is a contemporary engagement with textiles and textile history in the 20th century. Joining this international group from Berlin are artists Jenny Michel, Haleh Redjaian, and Anna Schapiro.
Pia Lanzinger and Katrin von Maltzahn will present their work in artist talks and through a performance specifically developed for Kunsthaus Dahlem.
On two evenings, this year’s Dokumentale – the international festival for documentary film – will collaborate for the first time with Kunsthaus Dahlem, presenting documentary films by Gabriela Domínguez Ruvalcaba and Maureen Castle Tusty as well as a performance by Sarah Schurian.
The American Norwegian artist duo Krista Caballero and Frank Ekeberg have created a site-specific connection to the sculpture garden surrounding the building with their installation Birding the Future, which adapts bird calls from endangered or already extinct species. This reference to nature is echoed by wildlife expert Derk Ehlert, who will lead a bird walk through the property and the adjacent Grunewald Forest.
Israeli artist Hinda Weiss, together with curator Avi Feldman, invites visitors to take part in dialogical tours of the building, while Ukrainian dancer Dayana Mankovska explores and interprets the space through movement. Actor Maria Hartmann offers an essayistic-poetic perspective on the building in a literary collage presented as a reading. Actor and dancer Juliane Siebecke expresses her personal perception of the Kunsthaus Dahlem’s architecture in her performance Freifangen, developed especially for the anniversary. As an artist with Down syndrome, her participation supports Kunsthaus Dahlem’s commitment to not only welcoming people with disabilities as visitors, but also to actively including them as artists and cultural contributors. This approach is reflected in inclusive tours and workshop elements for visitors of all ages, developed together with participants with disabilities from our long-standing partner organisation dynamis e.V. and facilitated in cooperation with Kunsthaus Dahlem’s education team. The theme of community is reimagined here – as the creation of an inclusive and open space where diverse needs and perspectives can come together, enabling true cultural participation. Ali Hasan and Medhat Aldaabal build on this idea with their Dabke Community Dance, inviting us to come together through movement and to preserve shared memories of Berlin’s openness and diversity. On the final weekend, visitors can also explore an installation by the Stiftung Freizeit presenting results from workshops with artists Karen Michelsen Castañón and Agnieszka Góra as well as Jörn Hintzer and Jakob Hüfner (Datenstrudel). These workshops encouraged Berlin school classes to visualise the causes they care about and how they can drive change as a community.
The anniversary program will conclude with a concert performance by Parisa Saeednezhad, clarinettist at the Barenboim-Said Akademie, in the main hall of Kunsthaus Dahlem.
SPECIAL EDITION: Anniversary Bags
To mark the anniversary, Turkish curator Başak Şenova invited four artists to develop bag designs for the Kunsthaus. These were created by Bronwyn Lace, Haleh Redjaian, Hristina Ivanoska and Daniel Farfán.
COOPERATION PARTNERS
ARENET – The Americas Research Network: Cooperation for selected events in the LUNCH TALKS series and the Common Threads artist residency project
Dokumentale’25: Cooperation on the film screenings on 18 and 19 June
SUPPORT
10 YEARS – 10 DAYS! is supported by the Capital Cultural Fund (HKF).
Additional support provided by:
- Сircle of friends Freundeskreis Kunsthaus Dahlem – Bernhard Heiliger e. V.
- Artis for Hinda Weiss
- Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) for Frank Ekeberg
- Embassy of Mexico in Germany and Mexican Cultural Institute in Germany (Kulturinstitut von Mexiko in Deutschland) for the discussion event between artists Sary Haddad and Ana Hernández.