Bardo Projektraum 2027 Open Call
To all emerging and independent visual artists based in Berlin
Bardo Projektraum invites Berlin-based artists, collectives, curators, and cultural practitioners to submit proposals for its 2027 visual arts program.
Located in Friedrichshain Berlin, Bardo is a project space dedicated to artistic practices that move through states of transition: between languages, territories, identities, archives, bodies, technologies, and forms of belonging.
Since its opening, Bardo has supported artists working from situated, feminist, migrant, queer, diasporic, and experimental perspectives, with a special focus on practices connected to Latin America, the Caribbean, the Global South, and their diasporas in Berlin.
For the 2027 program, we are looking for artistic proposals that take risks, challenge dominant narratives, and expand the possibilities of what an exhibition, public program, or artistic encounter can be.
We welcome proposals in the fields of:
- visual arts
- photography
- installation
- video and moving image
- sound-based visual practices
- drawing, painting, sculpture, textile, and expanded material practices
- artist books, zines, and publishing
- archival and research-based practices
- participatory, community-based, or process-oriented formats
- hybrid projects between visual arts, performance, writing, and public program
The open call is addressed to emerging and independent artists based in Berlin, including artists who have recently arrived in the city and are looking for a first or further opportunity to present their work in a professional context.
Selected projects will become part of Bardo Projektraum’s 2027 visual arts program. The final structure of the program will depend on the proposals received, the available resources, and the confirmed funding for 2027.
What kind of projects are we looking for?
For its 2027 program, Bardo Projektraum is interested in artistic practices that question how we inhabit the present and imagine other possible futures.
We are looking for proposals that engage with material, social, spatial, and embodied forms of transformation. Projects may address the limits of the art object, alternative materialities, ecological responsibility, digital and ephemeral practices, or artistic processes that resist commodification and fixed forms of value.
We are also interested in practices that understand care as an artistic, social, and political gesture: projects that create spaces of mutual support, radical hospitality, collective learning, interdependence, and community-based imagination.
Bardo welcomes proposals that work with speculative geographies, imagined territories, borderless worlds, migrant and diasporic experience, post-national identities, and forms of belonging that exceed the logic of the nation-state. We are especially drawn to artistic languages that use fiction, digital media, archives, mapping, image-making, or expanded storytelling to think beyond inherited borders.
We are especially interested in experimental, collaborative, and process-based practices that are developed in dialogue with Bardo Projektraum. Rather than hosting formats that are already taking place elsewhere, we want to support proposals that respond to the specific context, scale, community, and atmosphere of Bardo. The project does not need to be entirely new, but it should find a meaningful and distinct form here.
Across these different directions, we are interested in artistic practices that ask:
How can images, objects, archives, bodies, and technologies carry memory?
What forms of materiality emerge beyond the stable art object?
How can artistic practice create spaces of care, encounter, and collective infrastructure?
How do migration, translation, displacement, and diaspora reshape our sense of place?
What kinds of geographies can be imagined beyond borders, nations, and inherited maps?
How can the body become a site of resistance, knowledge, vulnerability, and political imagination?
What can a small project space make possible that larger institutions often cannot?
Projects may take the form of an exhibition, installation, screening, publication presentation, workshop, public program, archive activation, research-based format, performative intervention, or another artistic encounter.
We welcome proposals that are already developed, as well as projects that need a space to be tested, expanded, or shared with a public.
What Bardo can offer
Depending on the selected proposal and confirmed funding, Bardo Projektraum may offer:
- presentation space at Bardo Projektraum in Berlin-Friedrichshain
- basic curatorial support
- production and installation guidance
- communication through Bardo’s channels
- support with press and social media
- opening event or public presentation
- basic photo documentation
- use of the space for installation and deinstallation
- artist fee and/or production support, subject to confirmed funding
- inclusion in Bardo’s 2027 public program and archive
Bardo is a small independent project space. We are interested in working closely with artists to find formats that are meaningful, feasible, and sensitive to the scale of the space.
Who can apply?
You can apply if you are:
- an artist, collective, curator, researcher, or cultural practitioner based in Berlin
- working in or around the field of visual arts
- interested in experimental, situated, feminist, queer, migrant, diasporic, decolonial, archival, speculative, material, embodied, or community-based artistic practices
- looking for a professional context to present, test, or further develop your work
We especially welcome applications from FLINTA*, queer, BIPoC, migrant, diasporic, disabled, and working-class artists and cultural practitioners, as well as people whose perspectives are structurally underrepresented in the Berlin art field.
We are interested in artistic urgency, clarity of vision, and the relationship between your proposal and the context of Bardo Projektraum.
What should your application include?
Please send one PDF in English or German with the following information:
- Project title
- Short project description
Maximum 2,500 characters. - Format of the proposal
Please briefly describe the format you imagine: exhibition, installation, screening, workshop, publication presentation, public program, archive activation, research format, performative intervention, or another artistic form. - Why Bardo?
Please tell us why you think your project belongs at Bardo Projektraum.
Maximum 1,500 characters. - Visual material
Up to 10 images, video links, portfolio links, or documentation of previous work. - Short biography
For individual artists: maximum 1,000 characters.
For collectives or group proposals: please include short biographies of the main participants. - Technical needs
Please describe what you would need in terms of installation, equipment, light, sound, video, accessibility, or spatial conditions. - Preferred period in 2027
Please indicate if there are months when you are especially available or unavailable. - Access needs
Please let us know if there is anything we should consider in order to make the application process, meetings, installation, or public presentation more accessible for you.
Optional: You may include reflections on your positionality, working context, or lived experience if this is relevant to your proposal. This is not mandatory.
Selection Criteria
The selection will be based on:
- artistic quality and clarity of the proposal
- relevance to the context and scale of Bardo Projektraum
- experimental, critical, or situated approach
- feasibility within the space and available resources
- urgency of the artistic question or research
- contribution to Bardo’s 2027 program
We will not evaluate applications based on academic credentials, institutional visibility, or commercial success.
Timeline
Open Call published: 01.07.2026
Deadline for applications: 30.07.2016
Selection results: 11.2026
Program period: January–December 2027
The final number of selected projects depends on available funding and the overall 2027 program structure.
Questions and application submission
For questions and application submissions, please contact:
We warmly invite interested applicants to visit us during our exhibitions and public programs to experience how the space works in action.
Please send your application as one PDF.
Subject line:
Bardo 2027 Open Call – [Your Name / Project Title]
Deadline: 30.07.2026
Unfortunately, we cannot offer individual feedback for applications that are not selected.
Artists who are interested in the open call are welcome to send their applications before the public information meeting in August.
Accessibility
Bardo Projektraum is located at Jessnerstraße 33, 10247 Berlin.
The space is located on the ground floor. A movable ramp is available. The toilets are currently not wheelchair accessible. The bathrooms are non-gendered.
If this open call or application process is not accessible to you, please contact us. We will try to find an alternative way for you to apply.
About Bardo Projektraum
Bardo Projektraum is an independent art space located in Friedrichshain, Berlin, at Jessnerstraße 33. Situated on the ground floor, the space opens directly onto the street and functions as a flexible site for exhibitions, performances, workshops, talks, screenings, publications, research formats, and community-based artistic encounters.
Spatially, Bardo is intimate and adaptable. It is not a white cube in the conventional sense, but a project space shaped by proximity, experimentation, and exchange. Its scale allows artists and publics to meet closely, to test ideas, to activate the room in different ways, and to create formats that are sensitive to context rather than standardized exhibition models.
The name Bardo refers to a transitional state: an in-between space where forms, identities, languages, memories, and territories are not fixed, but in movement. From this idea, Bardo supports artistic practices that work with transformation, displacement, care, memory, embodiment, migration, feminism, queer perspectives, diasporic experience, and decolonial forms of knowledge.
Bardo is especially interested in practices that do not only present finished works, but create situations: spaces for encounter, collective thinking, experimental processes, and alternative ways of being together. Its program includes visual arts, performance, moving image, sound, publishing, workshops, and public programs, often bringing together artistic research and situated community work.
Bardo Projektraum is part of the artistic ecosystem developed by Karne Kunst gUG under the artistic direction of Marcela Villanueva. Founded in Berlin, Karne Kunst works as a platform for contemporary art, cultural production, and situated infrastructures from diasporic, feminist, migrant, and Global South perspectives. Through Bardo, Karne Kunst creates a local space where these practices can be shared, supported, and made visible in dialogue with Berlin’s independent art scene.
Bardo is both a space and a method: a place for artists, cultural workers, and communities to gather around artistic practices that imagine other forms of relation, visibility, and belonging.
