Language: English.
Venue: KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 4th floor.

Free admission. Registration online.

The panel brings together artists and authors to reflect on personal experiences of resettlement and the continuation of artistic practice across changing contexts. Rather than approaching the topic abstractly, the discussion centres on lived experience: how relocation is perceived, processed, and translated into creative work. The conversation will explore how shifting environments affect one’s relationship to place, audience, and self. What does it mean to continue working elsewhere, away from home and political conflicts? How does distance reshape one’s perception of a former home, and what new forms of attention, responsibility, or detachment emerge? The panel will also consider the emotional dimensions of resettlement – feelings of disorientation, freedom, constraint, or redefinition – and how these will be visible in different artistic practices. Bringing together perspectives from literature, visual art, and film, the panel asks whether these experiences unfold similarly across disciplines or produce distinct forms of response.

Julia Cimafiejeva is a Belarusian writer and translator. She is the author of six poetry compilations in Belarusian and the non-fiction book Minsk Diary, written in English. Cimafiejeva’s debut American book, Motherfield: Poems & Belarusian Protest Diary (Deep Vellum, 2022), was shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry. Her recent titles in German are Ich zerschneide die Geschichte. Lyrik und Collagen (Edition Frölich, 2025) and Blutkreislauf (edition.fotoTAPETA, 2025). In 2020, Cimafiejeva took part in the protests in Belarus, followed by the rigged presidential election. Since then, she has lived in exile in Europe. She was a fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program (2025) and a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy (2026).

Hiwa K is an artist born in Kurdistan, Iraq, and lives and works between Berlin and international contexts. In his artistic practice, he combines sculpture with film, performance, and music, engaging with questions of memory, migration, knowledge transfer, and informal pedagogy. His artistic trajectory has also been shaped by musical studies. Hiwa K’s works have been shown worldwide in museums, biennials, and exhibitions, including the Biennale di Venezia (2015) and documenta 14 (2017). He has received several awards, including the Arnold Bode Prize in connection with documenta 14. Since April 2026, Hiwa K has been Professor of Sculpture at the Braunschweig University of Art (HBK).

Farahnaz Sharifi is an Iranian filmmaker and film editor, now living in Germany. If not the first, she is among the earliest to use personal and family archives for storytelling in Iranian cinema, transforming these archives from matters of private and individual history into collective history. She is also a well-known film editor. Her book of short stories, Breathing in Open Air, was published in Iran in 2009. Her latest film, My Stolen Planet, premiered in the Berlinale Panorama in 2024. The film was nominated for the 2024 European Film Academy Award and has won more than 25 awards. She is currently developing her new film project and her second book.

Azar Mahmoudian is an independent curator and educator working between Tehran and elsewhere. Her recent practice engages collective and self-organized forms of study, and questions of anonymity within cultural practices.