The Kyiv Biennial is a nomadic, international project that interweaves artistic, political, and social issues. For its tenth anniversary, it took place across Europe through a series of exhibitions and events in 2025, including at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, M HKA in Antwerp, the Dnipro Center for Contemporary Culture, the Dovzhenko Centre in Kyiv, and Lentos Kunstmuseum in Linz. The works and themes present in the biennial’s various iterations form the basis for A Bird That Cannot Land, its chapter at KW, which takes shape as an extensive live program and a large-scale exhibition spanning the entire building, contributing to the biennial’s reflections through contemporary art, sound, and discourse.

In a context of growing conflicts and shifting political realities, A Bird That Cannot Land centers on the notion of a “Middle-East-Europe” and its histories of coloniality and imperialism. By expanding the scope of the Kyiv Biennial and linking post-Soviet Europe with the Baltics, Central and Southwest Asia, and the Mediterranean, the exhibition and its live and discursive programs aim to open space for listening to interconnected pasts and presents, and for rethinking how geographies, histories, and realities are told and perceived.

The exhibition presents works from the touring Kyiv Biennial, with additional new commissions for Berlin. Exploring notions of memory, displacement, and belonging, the extensive live program foregrounds relational and embodied practices and features transnational artists from Berlin’s diasporic communities.

Funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation). Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation) is funded by the Beauftragter der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (German Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media).

KW Curatorial Team:
Curator: Sofie Krogh Christensen
Assistant Curator: Linda Franken
Assistant Exhibition: Radia Soukni

Live Curator: Lorena Juan
Assistant Live Curator: Nikolas Brummer
Assistant Live Program: Saba Bagheri

Discourse Program Curator: Vasyl Cherepanyn
Assistant Discourse Program: Triin Metsla

Expanded Curatorial Team:
Vasyl Cherepanyn, Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC), Kyiv
Emma Enderby, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin
Nav Haq, M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp
Sarah Jonas, Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz
Serge Klymko, Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC), Kyiv
Magda Lipska, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw