Becoming B at Künstlerhaus Bethanien
Left: Janus! Janus! Door! Door!, performance with MINQ, Ania Nowak, Melanie Jame Wolf, exhibition opening, Melanie Jame Wolf, A stage she’s going through. Photo: Galya Feierman. Right: performative reading by Emil Ertl and Pooja Patel, exhibition opening, Krys Huba, All of those records; tell me, bee. Photo: Galya Feierman.
BERLIN.—
In 2024, Künstlerhaus Bethanien celebrated its 50th anniversary—marking five decades of artistic experimentation, international exchange, and cultural impact. As one of the world’s oldest and well respected residency programs, it offers artists from across the globe a temporary home, studio, and platform for public presentation.
With the appointment of Antje Weitzel as artistic director last year, Künstlerhaus Bethanien embarks on a long-term transformation process. Building on its legacy, she seeks to reimagine the institution as a dynamic space for exchange, creation, and presentation, while addressing what a residency can and should mean today.
This vision takes shape in Becoming B, a year-long exhibition series unfolding in five chapters. The series revisits the institution’s name, identity, and mission, asking what a residency might look like in the 21st century. What if Künstlerhaus Bethanien had a twin, a descendant, a fluid companion called Bethany—sometimes Beth, sometimes Bee, sometimes simply B? Becoming B embraces this speculation as a point of departure, opening space for new perspectives and shifting identities—through exhibitions, performances, lectures, and collaborative processes in which the public is invited to participate.
The first chapter, A stage she’s going through by Melanie Jame Wolf, curated by Kira Dell and Laura Seidel, sets the tone for this journey. For her show, the artist created an installation of textile Thresholds that invited the public to move through them. The exhibition provided space for contemplation and gave a stage to feelings of uncertainty. On the opening evening, the installation transformed into a performative setting with Janus! Janus! Door! Door!, presented together with MINQ and Ania Nowak.
Chapter two, All of those records; tell me, bee by Krys Huba, curated by Marie-Sophie Dorsch, turns the gaze inward. Taking the poetic figure of bee as a starting point, the artist explores questions of queer identity and belonging within normative social structures. bee itself materializes only in traces, unfolding across paintings, poetic fragments, and sculptural objects. In the interplay of image and text, shifting connections emerge—never fixed, always reconfiguring into new constellations.
The third chapter, Spectres of Sultana, curated and produced by Promona Sengupta, Aziza Ahmad, and Aziz Sohail, features works by Areez Katki, Aulic Anamika, Chitra Ganesh, houaïda, Iskandar Abdallah, Leila Bencharnia, Omar Kasmani, Sasha Perera, Shaunak Mahbubani, Sumona Dhakal, Wooly Aziz, and Zuneera Shah. Taking Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s pioneering 1905 science-fiction story Sultana’s Dream as its starting point, the project reimagines Sultana as a time-traveling feminist scientist—a ghost in the machine of South Asian history. Presented as a sonic odyssey and a zine, the exhibition weaves together queer and feminist lineages, forgotten encounters, and diasporic connections across past and future.
Chapter four, It’s Just a Matter of Attitude by Rachel Libeskind, curated by Annabell Burger, challenges binaries, questions the circulation of imagery, and invites reflection on identity, memory, and the enduring power of images to shape perception. Drawing on a research-based practice, the artist recontextualizes images across collage, installation, sound, and performance to disrupt imposed boundaries—between personal and public, ancient and contemporary, societal and cultural—and to reveal unexpected parallels.
The fifth chapter, Waters, this deep, curated by Linnéa Meiners, brings Nnenna Onuoha and Om Bori into dialogue with the nearby Landwehr Canal. Water becomes a fluid element of transformation—carrying, reflecting, moving, connecting, and reshaping. Nnenna Onuoha collects noises surrounding the body of water, conjuring speculative visions and filling sonic gaps with imagined worlds, while Om Bori follows the canal through material encounters, tracing remnants of algal formations and microorganic alterations. Currents of history, memory, and identity intermingle, shaping new narratives for Künstlerhaus Bethanien.
Across all five chapters, Becoming B transforms Künstlerhaus Bethanien into a laboratory of experimentation, collective imagination, and reflection. Names, identities, and histories shift and multiply, offering new perspectives on what an residency can be—embracing not one fixed identity, but many possible futures.
The exhibition series is made possible with support from the Hauptstadtkulturfonds, Berlin. Chapter 3 received additional support from the ifa—Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Germany.
As an institution, Künstlerhaus Bethanien is funded by the Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und gesellschaftliche Zusammenhalt, Berlin.
