Curated by Juan A. Gaitán

After Artur Żmijewski’s controversial seventh edition, in which activist strategies prevailed over artistic ones, the 8th Berlin Biennale (organized by Gaitán with a team that includes six artists and curators) will attempt a more traditional presentation. Some fifty artists will show work in three venues: the KW on Auguststraße, the rather off-center Haus am Waldsee, and the ethnological Museen Dahlem, whose collection, given its colonialist ties, is currently the subject of critical debate. The ways in which such ghosts of Berlin’s cultural past continue to act on the city’s present is a primary focus of the biennial. As a prelude to the exhibition, architect Andreas Angelidakis was invited to designCrash Pad, 2014, which is already on view at the KW. Billed as a “multipurpose room,” the installation is equipped with Orientalist rugs and free Wi-Fi and, anachronisms notwithstanding, is meant to conjure a nineteenth-century salon.

— Eva Scharrer