An interview with curator Carolin Brandl on fragile encounters, layered histories, and why presence matters more than resolution.
Late summer in Berlin. The city feels suspended between languor and intensity, nights stretching on, days flickering with heat. And at the glass octagon of the Schinkel Pavillon, Female Gaze 2025 opens its doors.
Curated by Carolin Brandl, the format gathers international artists across generations and disciplines: Cecilia Bengolea (Argentina/France), nasa4nasa (Egypt), La Ribot (Spain/Switzerland), Göksu Kunak (Turkey/Germany), Lenio Kaklea (Greece/France), Catol Teixeira (Brazil/Switzerland), Ruth Childs with Cécile Bouffard (USA/Switzerland/France) and more.
Across three days, performance, video, sound, and sculpture intersect â asking who looks, who is seen, and how expectations shift. The pavilion itself, hovering between transparency and opacity, becomes stage and membrane: porous, vulnerable, charged.
Catol Teixeira © Solene Hoffmann
Multiplicity as a shifting mirror
We had the pleasure to interview curator Carolin Brandl; in the following Q&A she reflects on multiplicity, fragile architectures, and the silent resistances shaping Female Gaze 2025.
The female gaze emerged in the 1970s as a counter-model to the male gaze. What interests you in the term today?
CAROLIN BRANDL: The concept began as a critique of the male gaze, then remained largely absent for decades. Today I expand the discussion to include non-binary positions. For me, it is about looking closely, making new aspects visible and playing with expectations. Multiplicity is crucial â even now, stereotypes and clichĂ©s persist that can be broken open.
You speak of a âgame of gaze dispositions.â How do you shape this dramaturgy?
CB: I consciously construct the dramaturgy. Works are placed in relation to each other to create interweavings. I hold back in explanatory texts so that the audience can remain free in their interpretations.
Photo by Manon Briod
The refusal to fix meaning mirrors the architecture itself: glass walls that reveal as much as they conceal, allowing the gaze to wander, refract and return. The audience becomes part of this dramaturgy, their movements and silences shaping the rhythm of the event.
Encounters as fragile architectures
Icons such as La Ribot meet younger voices like nasa4nasa. What arises in this encounter?
CB: Complexity emerges in the interplay â history, cultural contexts and biographies intertwining. Each invited position is highly singular and the dialogue itself becomes the special element. The presence of La Ribot performing again in this context is an honor.
Video, sound, sculpture, performance â how do these media intersect?
CB: In Cecilia Bengoleaâs works, media do not stand separately but overlap and transform one another. In the constellation at the Pavillon, this interplay will take on further layers.
Photo by Pilar Cembrero
The program unfolds like a choreography of encounters. Bouffardâs sculptural fragments echo Ruth Childsâ body, Bengoleaâs dancehall-inflected videos seep into the Pavillonâs glass skin, while La Ribot bends time by staging her early striptease against the present. These fragile architectures generate atmospheres that resist simplification: porous, resonant, alive.
Gestures as silent resistances
La Ribot juxtaposes an early striptease piece from 1991 with a new performance. How do you perceive this principle?
CB: Older works can reveal new layers in contemporary dialogue. In this edition, I am interested in the juxtaposition itself: a striptease that unsettles expectations, placed beside a work invoking an archaic ritual between destruction and fusion.
In nasa4nasaâs Sham3dan, ritual becomes silent resistance. What role do such gestures play?
CB: Gestures have a micro-political power. Resistance does not always need to be loud. In Sham3dan, synchronized movement transforms into quiet yet potent resistance.
When such diverse voices converge, how is the atmosphere shaped?
CB: It is the multiplicity itself that defines the edition â multiple generations, cultural contexts and references that remain open to divergent readings.
And finally: what awaits the audience in the interplay of these positions?
CB: It is the turns and twists of the individual works. Only in the shared experience will Female Gaze 2025 become what it is intended to be: a collective event.
Photo by David Visnjic
Silent resistances, fragile architectures, multiplicities of voice: these are not curatorial catchphrases but atmospheres that the audience must enter. The Schinkel Pavillon, suspended between intimacy and spectacle, becomes the host for an unfolding that is less about clarity than about resonance.
Photo by Omar El Kafrawy
In Berlin, a weekend is never just a weekend â it is always an experiment in presence. Female Gaze 2025 situates itself exactly there: in the fragile, shifting space between performance and exhibition, spectacle and intimacy. It does not seek definitive statements, but moments of resonance. Multiplicity replaces resolution: perspectives overlap, histories are layered, gestures and gazes collide. To attend is not simply to watch but to enter an atmosphere where meaning remains unsettled. For visitors, the experience will be less a sequence of performances than a collective intensity â fragile as glass, luminous as dusk, fleeting as summer.
Performances run 22â24 August, the exhibition continues until 31 August.âšFull programme here.