The 10th Berlin Biennale takes its title from Tina Turner’s song We Don’t Need Another Hero. It is curated by a South African artist, curator and teacher at the Wits University School of Arts, Gabi Ngcobo. Forty-six artists are exhibited, three-quarters of whom are women drawn from countries as diverse as Iran, Poland, SA and Cuba. Most of the artists have links to the global south. Power, knowledge systems and historical narratives all contribute to creating toxic subjectivity, the curatorial statement suggests. Ngcobo writes that centuries of repressed vocabularies have to be undone and reconfigured.
Spending a few days immersed in the exhibition was refreshing, uplifting and sobering — moving from room to room in an engagement with many powerful female voices and exploring ideas not always so prominent in international art exhibitions. The show is spread across three main sites taking in well-known art establishments: Akademie der Kunste, one of Europe’s oldest cultural ins...
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