Date｜06.14-09.14.2025
Veune｜Sawangwongse Yawnghwe-KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany; Amol K. Pail-Sophiensæle, Berlin, Germany
The 13th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art is an international exhibition of more than 60 artistic positions and more than 170 works across four venues. The encounter with foxes within the inner city of Berlin is a starting point for the exhibition as an investigation of fugitivity. It examines the ability of works of art to set their own laws in the face of lawful violence in unjust systems, and to allow thinking to enfold even under conditions of persecution, militarization, and ecocide. The title, passing the fugitive on, may be read as a missive or instruction piece to the received. Some fugitive content is passed, and the audience is the receiver of cultural evidence. Now they must themselves turn fugitive, run with it, pass it on, or keep it in hiding until it is transmissible, sayable.
The 13th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art is curated by Zasha Colah. Valentina Viviani is Assistant Curator.
Text: The 13th Berlin Biennale
About the featured works by Sawangwongse Yawnghwe:
The Joker is anti-capitalism; he hates Wayne Enterprises, which makes and procures weapons for Batman. The Joker presents an arms list like it’s a menu, affixing it with words like “prix fixe,” “antipasti,” “primi,” “secondi,” “contorni,” and “dolci.” He plans to take over the world—by feeding everyone more sugar.
From the heights of KW Institute for Contemporary Art’s attic, overlooking the city and the 13th Berlin Biennale, he observes us from his lair. Cherry-red healing lamps shine from the tiny windows of his hideout. The broken pieces of his scattered childhood dream—a career as a stand-up comedian—have not been fully swept away. The Joker goes to therapy, only to realize the analyst is just as broken as he is. He turns to art history and Frantz Fanon’s how-to book, The Wretched of the Earth (1961).
Yellow contact lenses, lime-green makeup, and clown exercises are all part of the preparation for world takeover. The headquarters is a Gesamtkunstwerk-as-practical-joke. Sawangwongse Yawnghwe, playing the Joker in a video, rattles off statements that unravel the intricacies of the worlds of finance, military, and politics. An architectural model of the Shan Palace, occupied by the military for decades, is one day to be the Yawnghwe Museum. For now, a fictional Yawnghwe Museum roams in exile. A maze of banners hold linkages between conflicts, arms production, and the national manufacturing of weapons.
These networks commonly intersect behind the veneer of museum committees, biennale funding, and art patronage. The arms list mirrors an artist list. Exhibition-making is also an exercise of international soft power. The Joker mocks the militarization and weaponization of art. The Joker is a disruptive element in society. He expresses the grievances of the people.
Text: Sumesh Sharma
About the featured works by Amol K. Patil:
Amol K Patil approaches Sophiensæle’s early years as a space of intensive political and cultural activity during its time as the headquarters of the Berlin Craftsmen’s Association. He explores this through the “BDD Chawls” (Bombay Development Department): special architecture used as social housing for trade union workers in Mumbai. These buildings—known for their cramped living conditions and communal bathrooms—were originally constructed by the British in the early twentieth century to house poor male migrant workers who toiled in factories or mines. Chawls were important spaces of political activism, both during the colonial period and after India’s independence in 1947. B. R. Ambedkar, the principal architect of the Constitution of India, lived here. The buildings were demolished and replaced by new ones several years ago as part of large-scale remodeling and upgrading projects.
Patil grew up near the chawls. His artistic affinity for sound and movement can be traced back to his fondness for the interlocking, noisy life there. His father belonged to the factory workers’ union and wrote experimental plays, which were performed for the union members in the 1980s. His grandfather wrote powada, a form of spoken word or rap, to document Ambedkar’s political uprisings against India’s abhorrent caste system. Although officially banned, discrimination against people based on their hierarchical position in the caste system is still a reality in India today. Patil seeks to use art to make the voices of the chawls’ former inhabitants audible again and reflect their collective character.
A radio plays fiery speeches, but then combusts into a cloud of smoke. B. R. Ambedkar, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, and the workers’ movement itself are linked in the drawings on the walls. The theater of the social and its political dimension unfolds.
Text: Kito Nedo
