14th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art
Title: Central Europe Eastern Time
Curated by: Vasyl Cherepanyn
June 5 – September 12, 2027
Press & Professional Preview: June 3–4, 2027
Opening: June 4, 2027, 7 pm
The 14th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art will take place from June 5 to September 12, 2027, at various locations across Berlin. Curated by Vasyl Cherepanyn, the upcoming edition will unfold under the title Central Europe Eastern Time.
Central Europe Eastern Time proposes a new reading of Berlin from the East and offers a perspective on Europe shaped by regions, experiences, and societal realities that have long been pushed to the margins of the European narrative.
The title serves as a navigation tool, an instrument of orientation, and describes a chronotope in which space (tópos) and time (chrónos) are inseparably connected. It points to how shifting political, economic, and ideological systems define today’s conditions of human coexistence. In this sense, orientation is not only a question of where we are, but also of understanding the different historical and political times that simultaneously come to pass in our present.
Through this perspective, the Biennale expands the spatial and temporal coordinates already inscribed in its name and places Berlin within a broader Eastern European context, stretching from the Balkans to the Baltics, from Central Europe to the South Caucasus and beyond. The edition will also address the changing relationship between East and West as it is materially embedded in Berlin’s historical layers, from its architecture and institutions to its politics of memory and social fabric.
Building on this approach, the 14th Berlin Biennale will take place at exhibition venues including KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, as well as other locations across Berlin. The Biennale will extend into public space, infrastructures, sites of transit and remembrance, where social and political life intersects with questions of class, labour, citizenship and institutional control. Together, these locations will propose a new topology of Berlin and different routes through the city. Central Europe Eastern Time will focus on artistic practices that offer a precise understanding of their respective locations while pointing towards broader structures shaping the region and its present.
Vasyl Cherepanyn was born in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, and currently lives in Berlin. He is the co-founder and head of the Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC), a platform for collaboration among academic, artistic, and political communities. VCRC organizes the Kyiv Biennial and is a founding member of the East Europe Biennial Alliance (EEBA). Cherepanyn is part of the curatorial team of the Kyiv Biennial, which was presented in 2025 at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Dnipro Center for Contemporary Culture, Dovzhenko Centre in Kyiv, and Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, and in 2026 at KW Institute for Contemporary Art. In addition to his curatorial work, he has been teaching at various international universities in Europe. He holds a PhD in philosophy and is also a writer and editor.
The Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art takes place every two years at different locations across Berlin. Since its first edition in 1998, it has developed experimental exhibition and event programmes with invited curators, bringing artistic and political positions into dialogue with Berlin and its inhabitants. The Berlin Biennale has been funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation as a top-ranked cultural institution since 2004 and is organized by KUNST-WERKE BERLIN e. V.
