Contemporary art, displacement, memory and materiality at Bardo Projektraum, Berlin

9–29 October 2026
Vernissage: Friday, 9 October, 18:00
Bardo Projektraum, Jessnerstraße 33, 10247 Berlin

What moves when people move — and what remains embedded in matter?

Those Who Move Through Matter approaches displacement not only as a geographical or human condition, but as a movement that also takes place through objects, materials, technologies, memories and ecosystems.

Curated by House of Half Ideas — Dzekashu MacViban and Kenan Khadaj, the exhibition brings together works by Gabriella Torres-Ferrer, Mohsen Hazrati and Yupanqui Ramos, whose practices engage with different forms of material, digital and temporal displacement.

From soil, crops and biological resources to data, technological infrastructures and inherited narratives, the exhibition asks what happens when matter is removed, transported, transformed or reclassified. A seed carried across continents, an object separated from its original context, or a technology inserted into another system can carry histories of extraction, colonialism, migration and ecological transformation.

Rather than treating the non-human as a passive backdrop to human movement, Those Who Move Through Matter considers matter itself as a bearer of memory. Materials retain traces of the systems through which they circulate: economies, borders, technologies and histories of power.

Drawing on ideas of fragmented archives and critical fabulation, the exhibition also asks how histories marked by absence, violence and displacement might be revisited without presenting them as fixed or complete narratives.

Across installation, digital technologies, material practices and performance, the three artists open different paths through these questions, bringing together ecological, technological and cultural forms of displacement.

VERNISSAGE

Friday, 9 October 2026, from 18:00

Artist Talk + Guided Tour with Gabriella Torres-Ferrer, Mohsen Hazrati and Yupanqui Ramos

The opening evening invites visitors to encounter the exhibition together with the participating artists.

Through an artist talk and guided tour, Gabriella Torres-Ferrer, Mohsen Hazrati and Yupanqui Ramos will introduce their works and discuss the different material, technological and historical movements that inform their practices.

Admission free.

PUBLIC PROGRAM

Curating the Unfinished

Monday, 12 October 2026, 18:30

Guest Lecture by Dzekashu MacViban and Kenan Khadaj

Presented as part of Art Intensive Berlin 2026 / All About Curating

In Curating the Unfinished, curators Dzekashu MacViban and Kenan Khadaj reflect on their collaborative practice through three projects: Surreal Continuum: Revisiting, Remapping, Reimagining Surrealism at HKW, Middle Ground at HKW, and Those Who Move Through Matter at Bardo Projektraum.

Taking “the unfinished” as a point of departure, the talk explores how curatorial projects can remain open when no single format can contain all the questions they raise.

Across their practice, historical narratives are revisited and reimagined while literature, oralture, visual art and performance are brought into conversation. MacViban and Khadaj consider how collaboration allows projects to change direction, unexpected relationships to emerge and multiple interpretations to remain possible.

FINISSAGE

Thursday, 29 October 2026, from 18:00

Artist Talk + Guided Tour with Gabriella Torres-Ferrer and Yupanqui Ramos

The closing evening offers another opportunity to encounter the exhibition through the perspectives of the artists.

Gabriella Torres-Ferrer and Yupanqui Ramos will guide visitors through their works and reflect on the materials, processes and questions that have shaped the exhibition.

Admission free.

THE ARTISTS

Gabriella Torres-Ferrer

Gabriella Torres-Ferrer (b. 1987, Puerto Rico) is an artist and researcher based in Berlin, working across installation, computational systems, found objects and material-based practices.

Their work investigates the systems that organise contemporary life and the material realities they produce, examining how technological, economic and political infrastructures shape perception, territories, resources and everyday life.

Rooted in Puerto Rico and its entanglement with global networks of extraction, technology and power, Torres-Ferrer traces how seemingly abstract systems become materially present and how objects, commodities, data and infrastructures carry the histories of these systems.

Their work has been presented internationally at institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Hessel Museum of Art at CCS Bard, Swiss Institute, Museum der Arbeit and SAVVY Contemporary. In 2020, Torres-Ferrer was a guest artist at CERN and a fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude.

Website: ggggg.gr
Instagram: @ggggg.gr

Mohsen Hazrati

Mohsen Hazrati (b. 1987, Shiraz, Iran) is a Berlin-based artist exploring the intersection of classical literature and digital technologies.

Using AI, databases and computational systems, his practice recontextualises traditional narratives through contemporary technological frameworks.

Hazrati was awarded the VR ART PRIZE by Deutsche Kreditbank and is the co-founder of DAHProject. His work, research and lectures have been presented internationally at venues including the National Museum of Oslo, CCCB Barcelona, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Ars Electronica, Art Dubai, re:publica Berlin, UdK Berlin and Goldsmiths London.

Website: mohsenhazrati.com
Instagram: @mohsenzzzt

Yupanqui Ramos

Yupanqui Ramos is a multidisciplinary artist and costume designer from Mexico based in Berlin.

Working across performance, installation and video, her practice critically examines colonial dynamics within environmental contexts. She brings biotechnology, ancestral knowledge and more-than-human histories into dialogue to explore alternative relationships between human and non-human worlds.

Combining traditional craft techniques with contemporary artistic forms, Ramos investigates scientific colonialism, ecological disruption and the extraction of biological resources.

Her work has recently been presented at Hosek Contemporary, the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, Sophiensæle, SAVVY Contemporary, Humboldt Forum, Thalia Theater, Kampnagel and Beaux-Arts de Paris.

Website: yupanquiramos.com
Instagram: @yupanquiramos

THE CURATORS

House of Half Ideas

House of Half Ideas is a curatorial collective founded by Dzekashu MacViban and Kenan Khadaj.

Working across literature, visual art and political thought, the collective begins not from fixed answers but from open questions, fragments and conversations that resist closure.

Its curatorial practice explores how different artistic and intellectual forms can encounter one another while allowing projects to remain porous, unfinished and open to transformation.

Dzekashu MacViban

Dzekashu MacViban is a Cameroonian writer, curator, editor and publisher based in Berlin.

He is the founder of Bakwa, an organisation supporting African creatives through publishing, audio and translation projects. His curatorial practice takes Indigenous epistemologies, linguistic disobedience and Afro-diasporic discourse as points of departure, exploring the politics of identity, spatiality and individual and collective histories.

He is currently Curator of Literature and Oralture Practices at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin.

Website: dzekashumacviban.com
Instagram: @dzekashu_macviban

Kenan Khadaj

Kenan Khadaj is a Berlin-based curator, writer, journalist and translator whose work explores literature as a space for public encounter and for negotiating belonging, memory and political change.

Born in Swaida, Syria, he has lived in Germany since 2015 and currently works as Curator of Literature and Oralture Practices at Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

At HKW, Khadaj develops interdisciplinary literary programmes that bring writing into conversation with performance, music, film, oral traditions, exhibition and critical thought.

Instagram: @k.khadaj

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Those Who Move Through Matter is curated by House of Half Ideas — Dzekashu MacViban and Kenan Khadaj.

Artists: Gabriella Torres-Ferrer, Mohsen Hazrati and Yupanqui Ramos.

Presented at Bardo Projektraum, a project by Karne Kunst gUG, under the artistic direction of Marcela Villanueva.

Bardo Projektraum is supported by the Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt des Landes Berlin.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

Those Who Move Through Matter
9–29 October 2026

Vernissage
Friday, 9 October, from 18:00
Artist Talk + Guided Tour with the three artists

Curating the Unfinished
Monday, 12 October, 18:30
Guest Lecture by Dzekashu MacViban and Kenan Khadaj
Part of Art Intensive Berlin 2026 / All About Curating

Finissage
Thursday, 29 October, from 18:00
Artist Talk + Guided Tour with Gabriella Torres-Ferrer and Yupanqui Ramos

Bardo Projektraum
Jessnerstraße 33
10247 Berlin

Opening hours: Wednesday–Saturday, 14:00–18:00

Admission free.