instinct #20 Vernissage

Instinct #20 Vernissage
for LGBTQIA+
Free event

Radical Empathy *Queere Perspectives on Conflict, Resilience & Connectiont marks instinct #20 and brings together queer artists and collectives to explore how we live conflict differently—through practices of care, resilience, and connection.
Conflict is part of our lives. How can we live conflicts differently? Radical Empathy begins with the understanding that empathy is not soft, neutral, or given. It is learned, practiced, and risked. The exhibition explores queer artistic practices as sites of radical empathy—understood not as passive emotional identification but as a relational and transformative engagement with difference.
Drawing from queer history, progressive ethics of care, and contemporary art practices, the exhibition examines how queer art creates conditions for empathy that resist assimilation, challenge heteronormative perspectives, and center lived experience as a vital form of knowledge. Queer artists and collectives frequently work from positions of historical exclusion, using art as a means of survival, connection, and world-building. In this context, Radical Empathy moves beyond the notion of simply “feeling for” another; it emphasizes a willingness to remain open to discomfort, to difference, and the possibility of being transformed through encounter.
instinct #20
__ viewing 02.–12. April
__ Artists
Matthias Bade
Josch Hoenes & Tomka Weiß
Heami Lee
Paul Harfleet
Owa Mesa
Dylan Mitro
Monika Popiel & Paweł Świerczek
Lars Reimers
Tejal Shah
Andrey Shental
__ Performance
Ahmed El Gendy
Dumama
__ Guests (workshops / panel)
Joshua Amissah
Antke Engel
Jan Großer
Lo Höckner
Mati Klitgard
__ Film
Prinz in Hölleland (1993) von Michael Stock
__ Cooperation
Schwules Museum Berlin
Salzgeber Verleih
__ Curatorial Team
Eric LeRouge
in collaboration with
Neo Seefried & Kristijan Radakovic
*The exhibition instinct#20 Radical Empathy serves as an artistic reflection on two we are village projects, Conflic