Our Work
Oyoun conceives, develops and implements artistic-cultural projects through decolonial, queer * feminist and migrant perspectives.
Here you can find an overview of our selected projects.
Radical Rest Residence
Rooted in a practice of collective care and refusal, the fully funded Radical Rest Residency is not about productivity. It's a week-long sanctuary to rest, regenerate, mourn, listen, dream - together. In a time of increasing repression, censorship, and systemic violence, we believe in rest as strategy, as resistance, as survival. We especially invite those affected by censorship or silencing – particularly around Palestine solidarity – to apply.
Gadag
In the project 가닥 Gadag, we comb through threads of war memories - of women, of queer and marginalized bodies, and interweave them into a tapestry of collective memory.
Threads of Resilience
With the collectively curated three-day festival “Threads of Resilience,” we want to reflect on and learn from movements of resistance, resilience and solidarity around the world, and we want to come together for three days of impermanence and communal archiving. We want to speak out against oppression, silence, instrumentalization and division and raise our voices.
Tiny Oyounity
Oyoun's Tiny House is going on tour! Between the end of August and mid-October, our Tiny House wanders through various Berlin districts. For one week we stop at different cultural locations and institutions and interact with the surrounding urban space, the neighborhood and the local partners.
Listening to the Land
“Listening to the Land” unfolds as a medium to transport the narratives of resistance and a regenerative future across borders and oceans. It encompasses creative, alternative methods and forms of revolutionary rebellion against the environmental degradation of ongoing colonial endeavours. Focusing on queer, feminist, postcolonial and indigenous artistic interventions, this interdisciplinary initiative creates a space for mutual learning, where hidden perspectives surface and transnational kinship is sought.
MOUDJAHIDATE*
In commemoration of the 60th anniversary of Algeria's independence from France, “Moudjahidate* - women*, resistance, queer alliance” honours the commitment of women* fighters in the struggle for freedom and autonomy for their people and themselves. The exhibition creates a space for all women* who contributed to liberating land with their bodies, minds and power.
Curators* LAB 2022
SOUP3
After our “Open Call” on the SOUP3 project a few weeks ago, numerous activists and artists from the neighborhood applied with their great ideas. Three selected project groups want to tell you their ideas over a cup of soup!
AUTOPOIESIS
AUTOPOIESIS explores the nuances of autobiographical art practices that have their roots in the contrasting locations of South Asia, Central America and the Caribbean. The focus is on the pluralistic shaping of the future by dissolving the boundaries between self and other as well as the Buddhist philosophy of non-duality.
rongin shagor / রঙিন সাগর
Based on a poem by Afro-German poet May Ayim, Oyoun's new artistic intervention "rongin shagor" reflects on cultures of remembrance by exploring the reflective and generative threads of cultural formations that lie in the senses of the oppressed body...
Becoming Alman
Physical artefacts, mixed media and performance - in this artistic field of tension, the Bulgarian artist Lora Krasteva invites you to a performative exhibition with "Becoming Alman", which revolves around the topic of citizenship.
UN:IMAGINABLE – OUR HISTORIES IN CONVERSATION
AS* PAPANGUS
AS* PAPANGUS critically engages with the colonial structure of carnival, vigilantly confronting the oppressive gaze and not allowing the exploitation of queer, racialized, women's*, disabled and structurally oppressed bodies.
Mightier than a Trampled Flower
Mightier than a Trampled Flower is a testimony for women* in wars against marginalizing historiography.
We should all be dreaming
WE SHOULD ALL BE DREAMING is a concept that focuses on the radical potential of dreaming as a restorative and subversive practice. Activists Sonya Lindfors and Maryan Abdulkarim invited participants to spend time together, to listen and dream together.
Fugitive Archives
Fugitive Archives explores questions about alternative media and ontologies of queer archives that challenge the dominant narratives of BiPOC queer stories.
Embodied Temporalities - On Tour
ESCAPISM
With ESCAPISM, Oyoun opened a platform for an artistic and sociocritical experiment, connecting virtual and physical space through digital interaction and affective learning.
THE PATH
The Oyoun was part of the interdisciplinary art project “The PATH”, which problematized the relationship between metropolis and individual from a queer and feminist perspective.
CURATORS * LAB
Tour 2021
We invited our curators * to create group work with one another, starting from the bold assumption that there are common, overlapping areas of interest that can take on a new form when worked on by a collective rather than by individuals.
Curatorial focus
Embodied temporalities
Curators, artists and cultural workers deal with identities, belonging and embodied memories from diasporic, decolonial and queer perspectives. A research, archiving, exhibition and performance project that involves over 40 people.
art technology thought
a'21 Techno Utopia x Post-Digital Ignorance
The two-month festival brings together over 60 artists and activists from North and West Africa, West Asia and Germany in a decentralized, networked and radically collaborative space on the subject of post-digital ignorance.
Lockdown residency
"What does self-care mean to you?"
"What does self-care mean to you?" - we asked the artists and cultural workers of the Oyoun Curators* Lab - and thus brought the Lockdown Residency to life.
FESTIVAL
Cartographies of Affect - in the queer & now
A liturgy of art and the medium, an intense and anti-disciplinary journey through queer migration, including a Bukhurr and Chikhat performance by trans, queer and non-binary people practicing indigenous rituals while telling their stories.
Open Call