The next Berlin Biennale will take place in summer 2027. An international search committee has now named the Ukrainian Vasyl Cherepanyn as curator. The curator and scientist, born in Ivano-Frankivsk in 1980, lives in Berlin. He holds a doctorate in philosophy and teaches at universities in Kiev, Warsaw, Helsinki and Frankfurt/Oder.
Cherepanyn works “between art, political philosophy and social movements” and is co-founder and director of the Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC), a platform for collaboration between scientific, artistic and political communities, the Berlin Biennale introduces him.
An eye on Europe’s change
In 2008, Cherepanyn co-founded the Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC), which organizes the Kyiv Biennale. The current issue is co-curated by Cherepanyn. Like the Berlin Biennale, the Kyiv Biennale is also funded by the Federal Cultural Foundation; it is currently taking place in various locations in Europe, such as Kiev, Warsaw and Antwerp, and will end in 2026 with an exhibition and a live program at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin.
The Berlin Biennale is setting a new focus with Vasyl Cherepanyn, an expert on the Eastern Europe region after the end of the Soviet Union. The last two editions of the Berlin Biennale with the Indian curator Zasha Colah 2025 and the artist-curator Kader Attia 2022 look at regions and art worlds outside of Europe.
Experiences from working in Ukraine
“As the epitome of the period after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Berlin Biennale holds the opportunity to create a kind of public sphere that is not just artistic or academic, but based on socio-political necessity. For me, this approach is based in particular on experiences from work in Ukraine, and it is necessary right now, as Russia’s colonial war across Europe confronts us with the most pressing questions of our time,” says Vasyl Cherepanyn on the occasion of his appointment.
Axel Wieder, director of the Berlin Biennale, emphasizes not only Cherepanyn’s regional expertise, but also his curatorial approach, which focuses on “collective artistic endeavors” that are deeply rooted in current social contexts and their urban environments.
The Berlin Biennale takes place every two years at different locations in Berlin. One of the main exhibition locations and basis of the event is the KW Institute for Contemporary Art on Auguststrasse, where the Berlin Biennale was founded in 1998.
A particular aim of each issue is to establish a dialogue with the city’s residents and to combine art with socially relevant topics. The Berlin Biennale must be measured against these criteria among the hundreds of biennales that exist worldwide. The next Documenta will take place in Kassel in the summer of 2027 – the even larger international art event.