This article first appeared in the Berlin Art Week 2026 special issue of Freitag.
From the 1960s onwards, large numbers of migrant workers from countries including Italy, Greece and Turkey came to West Berlin, many of them settling in Kreuzberg. At Gropius Bau, located in the district, curators Patrizia Dander and Gürsoy Doğtaş trace an art history of Kreuzberg that remains largely absent from the German canon in the group exhibition ›Kreuzberg: Kunst und Migration seit 1960‹ (Art and Migration since 1960).
der Freitag: Ms Dander, Mr Doğtaş, how do you approach a survey exhibition about such a vibrant district?
Patrizia Dander: The exhibition grew out of conversations with Gürsoy when I was applying to Gropius Bau. After many years in which the institution had pursued a globally oriented programme, I wanted to counter that with a hyperlocal perspective. With this exhibition, we want to demonstrate that an extraordinary diversity of artistic practices existed—and continues to exist—right on the institution’s doorstep, yet has received far too little attention. The exhibition builds on Gürsoy’s research into artists with a history of migration and tells an art history that still isn’t an integral part of the German canon—but should be. We’re also talking about a period when Gropius Bau didn’t yet exist as an institution: the building had been partially destroyed by bombing during the Second World War and only gradually reopened from the early nineteen-eighties onwards.
Gürsoy Doğtaş: I was really pleased when Patrizia asked if we could put the exhibition together. Focusing specifically on Kreuzberg immediately made sense to me—so much happened here that proved crucial to this art history. One important example is ›Gastarbeiter – Fremdarbeiter‹ (1975), an exhibition by Vlassis Caniaris, a Greek artist who had come to Berlin through the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme. For it, he created powerful works about the living conditions of migrant workers in Germany. Caniaris visited so-called »guest workers« in their homes, photographed them there and collected materials from their surroundings for his installations. It became an important point of reference for our research. I have a great deal of respect for Kreuzberg and approach it as an outsider: I grew up in Hanover, studied in Hamburg, and live in Munich.
Was there a particular work that served as a starting point?
PD: For me, it was a series: the ›Stamp Paintings‹ by Hanefi Yeter, a painter from Turkey. He came to West Berlin on a scholarship to study at the Hochschule für bildende Künste, now Berlin University of the Arts. In these paintings, he makes visible the bureaucratic procedures that migrant workers had to contend with. The portraits are overlaid with stamps for temporary residence permits as well as orders to leave the country. His striking visual language brought home to me, with uncompromising force, the reality faced by migrant workers.
GD: I would start with a different painting by Hanefi Yeter: ›Picknick in Berlin‹ (1975). In it, he takes socially critical observations and translates them into the style of Ottoman or Persian miniature painting. Rather than depicting his figures at the workbench, he shows them at leisure, at ease. The painting captures a sense of familiarity that I recognise, but hadn’t expected to encounter.
What connected the artists to Kreuzberg?
PD: In our conversations, we realised just how many artists engaging with migration had connections to Kreuzberg. There are several strands—studios and DAAD fellowships form one of them. They brought artists such as Vlassis Caniaris, Eduardo Paolozzi, and Colette to the city. Artists including Akbar Behkalam, Hanefi Yeter, and Azade Köker lived here for longer periods and exhibited at the Kunstamt Kreuzberg, now Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien. But migration also played a part in the work of artists such as Natascha Ungeheuer and Monika Sieveking. We wanted to connect these different perspectives. Our microscopic view reveals changes of macroscopic significance—artistically, socially, and politically. On a small scale, Kreuzberg reflected the forces that defined the post-war Federal Republic.
GD: That holds true for the period up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. We spoke extensively with artists, contemporary witnesses, and institutional directors about working methods, networks, and the political conditions that determined what could and could not be exhibited. Stéphane Bauer of Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien told us that the situation changed for artists after the fall of the Wall. Engagement with questions of migration seemed to attract less attention. With reunification, interest in their work waned and the city repositioned itself—not as a divided city any longer, but as a national one at the end of the Cold War. Some of the artists only then began to perceive themselves as foreigners. Some moved to Istanbul and continue to travel between the two cities today; others stayed.
Does the East–West relationship figure into the exhibition?
GD: We’ve worked with institutions that focus equally on West and East Berlin. Alongside the Berlin Museum, which is presenting an exhibition at the same time featuring some of the same artists, the FHXB Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum has been an important partner in the conversation. In our exchange with Aurora Rodonò and Natalie Bayer, we brought together their expertise in migration history and museum collections with our art-historical approach.
PD: The recruitment agreements concluded from 1955 onwards with countries including Greece, Italy, Turkey, and the former Yugoslavia refer to a West German phenomenon, but there is an intrinsic connection to East Germany. The construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 meant that West Berlin lost access to workers from the eastern part of the city. As a result, recruitment began somewhat later here than in the Federal Republic. The GDR also recruited so-called »contract workers«, in part to address labour shortages caused by workers leaving for the West. In our exhibition, Minh Duc Pham will address contract labour in the GDR with a performance on 1 October.
GD: Another important figure in this context is Nâzım Hikmet, a Turkish poet and playwright who fled political persecution and went into exile in the Soviet Union. He helped initiate broadcasts by the Turkish-language radio station Bizim Radyo in the GDR. The station also attracted a large audience in the West—from 1964, West Germany followed with Köln Radyosu, WDR’s Turkish-language radio programme. In 1977, Mehmet Aksoy curated an exhibition about Hikmet at the Kunstamt Kreuzberg that included artists from the GDR such as Werner Tübke. Hikmet serves as an important point of reference for many of the artists in our exhibition. So the connections are there, even if we haven’t devoted a separate chapter to them.
How did you find working together as a curatorial duo?
GD: The collaboration was very fruitful. It often prompted us to reflect on our own biographies. Patrizia may not be the child of »guest workers«, but she is the daughter of Italian migrant workers. Approaching the subject together, recognising aspects of our own histories within it, and seeing how artists engage with these experiences—I really valued that exchange.
Were there any particular moments that stood out during the collaboration?
GD: I was fascinated by our encounter with the painter Natascha Ungeheuer. She still lives in Kreuzberg, where she founded the Kreuzberger Straßentheater with Johannes Schenk in the late nineteen-sixties. The writer Aras Ören was a regular visitor to her flat on Naunynstraße. Their conversations gave rise to a play about the recruitment of so-called »guest workers«, which premiered around 1970 and ranks among the earliest works in the exhibition. The two remain friends to this day and speak on the phone every day.
PD: Perhaps that’s also what’s so wonderful about the exhibition: you leave with the sense that this history is far from finished.