LABA Berlin

Final exhibition at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien.

Mar’a’yeh is an artists fellowship by Laba Berlin, inviting Berlin-based artists who identify as Jewish and/or Muslim to participate in a year-long process of exchange, conversation, and co-creation.

17/06/2026

Together with the Fellows, we had the opportunity to visit the Fraenkelufer Synagogue in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Once one of Berlin’s largest synagogues, the site reflects both the rich history of Jewish life in the city and the devastating impact of the Holocaust. While much of the original building was destroyed, the remaining section continues to serve as an active center of Jewish community life. Today, an ambitious project is underway to rebuild a Jewish cultural and community center on the site of the historic synagogue, creating a space that connects remembrance with a vibrant future.

A special thank you to for the insightful tour and for sharing the history, resilience, and significance of this remarkable place. It was a meaningful experience that brought history to life and sparked important reflections about memory, identity, and community.

15/06/2026

LABA Mar’a’yeh Creative Director and Curator Olaf Kühnemann presented his work to the fellows, quickly running through 200 images of paintings and drawings, integrating this years fellowship theme by NAMING each image as it appeared to create a visual-textual flow of his personal story, creative process, and artistic development over time, from early childhood up to the present day.

As a child and teenager, Olaf Kühnemann lived on three continents and moved across different languages and cultures. Throughout his life and artistic practice, he has explored questions of open and flexible identities by unlearning imposed “spiritual”, religious and national stories to form more humanist and psychological perspectives. Born into the ideology of Anthroposophy within a German/Christian story and culture, and later woven into the Jewish/Israeli story and culture, shedding imposed narratives indoctrinated into him is a lifelong journey. Since 2009 he has been based in Berlin and has been working as an artist between Berlin and Tel Aviv.

09/06/2026

MEET OUR FELLOW: Billie Clarken ✨

Billie Clarken is a multidisciplinary artist whose work directs referential signs and objects in a satirical performance of the immortal image. Often returning to tropes in television culture, Clarken points out the paradoxes of a projected identity in the search for inauthenticity. Their work captures and appropriates use-objects and borrowed memory in combination with exaggerated forms, to install the evolving narrative of the Western consumer.
Born (1992) Fairfax, Virginia USA
Based in Berlin, Germany

04/06/2026

At LABA, we believe that meaningful artistic exchange starts with getting to know one another. That’s why we create opportunities for our fellows to spend time with our Creative Directors and curators beyond the programme setting, learning more about who we are, what inspires us, and the environments in which we work.

This week, our fellows visited the studio of .shijaku , one of LABA Berlin’s Creative Directors and curators, who is also an artist.

Located in the eastern part of Berlin, her studio occupies a building with a remarkable history. Once part of the former Stasi complex during the DDR era, the building was used to manufacture surveillance and espionage equipment. Today, the same spaces are filled with artists, makers, and creative practitioners—a striking transformation from a site of control into one of creativity, experimentation, and freedom.

During the visit, Denalisa shared insights into her artistic practice, daily routines, and the ideas that inspire her work. Together, we spent the afternoon exploring the studio, asking questions, and exchanging thoughts about art, work, and creative processes.

Thank you, Denalisa, for welcoming us into your studio and sharing a part of your world. ✨

01/06/2026

MEET OUR FELLOW: Simay Keles ✨

Simay Keles is a painter based in Berlin, Germany.
Born in Izmir, Turkey, she moved to Germany to pursue her studies when she was 18. Working in series, Keles’ work responds to nature, migration and human experience. Keles is profoundly inspired by her travels. Changing places and traveling through the cultures have always been a part of her life. She paints what she recognizes and witnesses as beautiful and in danger of erosion.

Her work moves between figuration and abstraction, depending on the series she is working on.
Her layered paintings consist of oil and acrylic colors. Without making sketches in advance, she uses both sides of the canvas, the different layers serve as a base for the next layer whilst leaving them all partly visible or the viewer through the transparent materials (e.g. tulle, silk, etc). She applies a sculptural approach to the canvas, as the spatial displacements resulting from the two layers create visual confusion, optical illusions and an unconventional perception of spaces. Aiming to keep the naturalness as an aspect within her work, she sometimes leaves unpainted and untouched spots on the raw canvas.

27/05/2026

MEET OUR FELLOW: Alexandru Gavriel Ganea ✨

Alexandru Gavriel Ganea (born 1990, Jerusalem) is a sculptor living and working in Berlin, Germany and Carrara, Italy. He holds a Masterʼs degree in Fine Arts which he acquired at the Weissensee Academy of Fine arts and Design in Berlin, under the guidance of Prof. Else Gabriel.Ganea works predominantly with marble and wood, creating sculptures that explore tension, duality and spatial relationships. His practice is guided by an intuitive, material led process; allowing the natural ow of the material to shape each form.Ganea focuses on creating work that emerges from within, drawing on emotion, as well as the relationships between humans, materials, and forms. Beginning with self- observation and his immediate surroundings, he aims to create works that exist between modernist heritage and the contemporaryexpression.

Credit Photo 3 Dor Schwartz
Credit Photo 4 Noam Rosenthal

22/05/2026

MEET OUR FELLOW: Hamza Mohammed Beg

Hamza Mohammed Beg is a Muslim artist whose practice unfolds across poetry, video, sound, and performance. His work is grounded in his training as a poet and shaped by an academic background in history, archival practices, visual narrative, and non-Western modes of knowledge and expression.

His artistic practice is defined by large-scale works of fiction that emerge across multiple mediums, held together through workshops and discursive formats, forming layered and performative narrative spaces.

Thematically, his work, both curatorial and independent, engages with questions of faith, labour, and the construction of identity.

His practice has been supported by institutions including the Goethe-Institut, Southbank Centre London, Vital Capacities, APAL (Asian Performing Artist Lab), OnSite Festival, and the Slade School of Fine Art.

He is also a member of the Berlin-based curatorial collective Akimbo, where he co-organizes experimental poetics events and an annual short film festival.

Credit Photo 3 Isabelle M. Schmitz
Credit Photo 7 Roman-Sten Tõnissoo

18/05/2026

MEET OUR FELLOW: Jeremy Steinberger ✨

Jeremy Steinberger is a filmmaker and journalist whose work explores the politics of belonging. Moving between documentary filmmaking and cultural journalism, he focuses on people who transform unfamiliar environments into spaces of belonging through art, music, and community. Across his projects, he is interested in how identities shaped by migration, exile, and cultural rupture can become the basis for solidarity and collective liberation rather than nationalism.
After reclaiming his family’s German citizenship, he moved to Berlin to develop a film investigating Jewish memory and the contradictions of postwar German remembrance culture. Beginning with his family’s history in a small German town, the project examines how communities construct narratives about the past and how younger generations are renegotiating Jewish identity in relation to them.
Steinberger has directed short documentaries for artists including Willie Nelson and reported on music and culture for Bandcamp Daily, The Austin Chronicle, K*T, and Consequence.

Adresse

Exhibition Space: Kottbusser Str. 10 / Offices And Studios: Kohlfurter Str. 41-4
Berlin
10999

Webseite

http://www.laba.berlin/

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