by Valentina Iancu // Dec. 5, 2025
Having emerged from the challenging times of the past few years, we now seem to be hurtling towards a new wave of global fascism. Queer and feminist movements are increasingly under attack, including in Berlin, previously thought to be something of a “rainbow” stronghold. In light of this accelerated violent shift, the question of resistance is becoming urgent. What can we do in order to survive and how can we help our communities, which are under constant threat? The exhibition project ‘The desire for being many’ responds to this state of urgency, exploring strategies of resistance while making space to envision solidarity, care and collective power in collaboration with 18 FLINTA artists. In essence, the show sets out to confront the reactionary, anti-feminist shifts of recent years while also working to build counter-publics and strengthen networks of solidarity, drawing clear inspiration from the ideas of author, philosopher and activist Ewa Majewska.
‘The desire for being many,’ installation view at Neun Kelche (featuring Oska Gutheil, Gosia Lehmann, Ren Loren Britton, Yishay Garbasz, Alexandra Ivanciu and Jolanta Nowaczyk) // Photo by Dorothea Dittrich
The curators—Kira Dell, Katharina Koch, Lillian Morrissey, Sylvia Sadzinski and Laura Seidel—researched the survival and resistance strategies developed by artists and activists from Central and Eastern Europe, particularly from countries such as Poland, Hungary or Russia where LGBT rights are attacked and abortion access is restricted or criminalized by authoritarian governments, prioritizing learning from various parts of the Global South, where queer communities have already imagined survival strategies for everyday life. The exhibition takes Majewska’s theory of “weak resistance” as its point of departure, adopting her notion of resistance as a continuous, collective practice grounded in small acts of care, shared vulnerability and everyday disobedience. Rather than heroic rupture, this form of resistance emerges from counterpublics composed of those pushed to the margins, whose rights remain unrecognized and who navigate persistent forms of exclusion through quotidian strategies of survival. ‘The desire for being many’ traces these subtle yet resilient gestures as they arise in intimacy, friendship and the determination to sustain fragile queer and feminist solidarities. The artists imagine modes of togetherness that contest neoliberal individualism, reclaiming the public sphere through shared experience and exploring how art can foster new alliances, affects and political imaginaries. In asking what forms of hope remain possible in dark times, the project foregrounds the lived knowledge, artistic strategies and collective imaginaries generated within trans and non-binary communities.
‘The desire for being many,’ installation view at Neun Kelche (featuring Alexandra Ivanciu and Jolanta Nowaczyk and Yishay Garbasz) // Photo by Dorothea Dittrich
On display in all of the exhibition spaces is the project ‘Exercising Collective Disobedience’ by Alexandra Ivanciu and Jolanta Nowaczyk, an artistic call for solidarity with women in Poland, where abortion is banned and the morning-after pill is also restricted. Ivanciu and Nowaczyk’s project is, in their terms, “hijacking the cultural space for activism” and inviting the exhibition visitor to actively engage and participate in creating a collective gesture of care by donating a morning-after pill. At the opening at Neun Kelche, Ivanciu and Nowaczyk served a drink called ‘The Flowers of Choice,’ a non-alcoholic cocktail composed of herbal flavors derived from plants historically associated with practices, attributed to witches in Eastern Europe, for inducing abortion. The artists also produced a series of short videos, currently on view at the Solaris space, documenting their attempts to purchase morning-after pills in various countries. Additionally, a set of interviews with pro-abortion activists from Eastern Europe is available for consultation at alpha nova & galerie futura.
‘The desire for being many,’ installation view at Neun Kelche (featuring Yishay Garbasz, Alexandra Ivanciu & Jolanta Nowaczyk, Oska Gutheil, Rebekka Benzenberg) // Photo by Dorothea Dittrich
Through emphasizing these gestures and platforming FLINTA feminist artists, the exhibition suggests that even in times of rising authoritarianism, the collective desire to be many remains a powerful antifascist force. Across the three venues, the exhibition unfolds through a series of works that translate vulnerability into concrete visual and spatial forms. At Neun Kelche, Yishay Garbasz’s ‘Vagina Dentata’—a pussy shaped from barbed wire—is a metaphorical minimalist piece, reframing the folk tale tradition in which vagina is believed to have teeth and is able to bite. Garbasz’s piece is calling for resistance in the face of violent far right so-called “anti-gender movements” that have gained renewed force across Europe and beyond. In a different register, Oska Gutheil’s densely populated painting stages a teeming crowd of surreal hybrid creatures, part human, part animal. Their distorted gazes and fantastical bodies form a collective presence that is unsettling and deeply alive, echoing the social pressures, stereotypes and projections that queer and feminist communities navigate daily, transforming them into a vibrant counter-public of their own.
‘The desire for being many,’ installation view at Solaris space (featuring Kaj Osteroth, Melo Börner) // Photo by Dorothea Dittrich
At Solaris, Melo Börner’s soft-textured alien figures subtly indicate the politics of emotional exposure. One of Melo’s aliens is tender, wounded, yet defiantly present, echoing the exhibition’s commitment to reinterpreting fragility as a shared resource rather than a weakness. Marta Popivoda, the author of the film ‘Landscapes of Resistance’—which interweaves the memories of 97-year-old Yugoslav Partisan Sonja across past and present, illuminating the enduring spirit and bodily continuity of antifascist resistance—shows a new work in the space at alpha nova & galerie futura, a collaborative project with Pary El-Qalqili, archiving the resistance and solidarity of Palestinian woman. Together, these works articulate a material vocabulary of resistance that moves beyond metaphor: they embody the cracks, the tensions and the imaginative leaps through which collective survival becomes possible.
Pary El-Qalqili & Marta Popivoda, Ana de Almeida & Alicja Rogalska & Vanja Smiljanić, ‘The desire for being many,’ installation view at alpha nova & galerie futura (featuring Pary El-Qalqili & Marta Popivoda and Ana de Almeida & Alicja Rogalska & Vanja Smiljanić) // Photo by Dorothea Dittrich
‘The desire for being many’ is a polyphony of voices, gathering questions from a multitude of timelines, imaginations, dreams and lines of inquiry. It is, after all, a desire—one that will continue to expand into a tool for everyday resistance. In order to sustain this continued desire, Majewska suggests: “We must fail, and learn to fail better, while overcoming the limits of contemporary models of political resistance.”
Exhibition Info
Neun Kelche
Group Show: ‘The desire for being many’
Exhibition: Oct. 26-Dec. 20, 2025
thedesireforbeingmany.de
Pasedagplatz 3–4, 13088 Berlin, click here for map
Solaris
Group Show: ‘The desire for being many’
Exhibition: Nov. 9–Dec. 7, 2025
thedesireforbeingmany.de
Urbanstraße 127, 10967 Berlin, click here for map
alpha nova & galerie futura
Group Show: ‘The desire for being many’
Exhibition: Nov. 23–Dec. 20, 2025
galeriefutura.de
Am Flutgraben 3, 12435 Berlin, click here for map
