From the 1960s onward, the gray streets of Cold War Berlin, hemmed in against the Wall, were reshaped by the voices, colors, and narratives carried in the suitcases of migrant workers arriving from Italy, Greece, and Turkey. At the heart of this transformation—which radically altered the social fabric of West Germany—lay a single neighborhood: Kreuzberg. Situated at the very core of this historical memory, Gropius Bau brings the neighborhood’s artistic and political legacy over the last six decades into sharp focus through the comprehensive exhibition “Kreuzberg: Kunst und Migration seit 1960” (Kreuzberg: Art and Migration since 1960), running from September 10, 2026, to January 17, 2027.
Tracing the everyday imprints of migration, displacement, and labor through over 130 works, the selection offers a rich visual archive spanning the quiet melancholy of Vlassis Caniaris’s child figure atop a red tricycle to Harun Farocki’s documentary frames; from the visual interventions of Azade Köker, Pınar Öğrenci, Hanefi Yeter, and Aykan Safoğlu to the text-based layers of Emine Sevgi Özdamar and Aras Ören. Juxtaposing historical works unseen for decades alongside new pieces produced specifically for this exhibition, the curation registers migration not merely as geographical relocation, but as a struggle for existence and collective solidarity forged against housing crises, racism, and alienation.
Curated by Gürsoy Doğtaş and Patrizia Dander, the exhibition refrains from reading Kreuzberg as a passive migrant quarter; instead, it positions the neighborhood as an emancipatory space of possibility where experiences of class, gender, and belonging solidify into a distinct artistic stance. Resonating in the streets to this day, this living memory invites visitors to confront head-on the testimonies glossed over by official German history.
