Guest Event
HAPPY PLACE
Exhibition of Biennale für Freiburg 3
5 Jun–27 Jul 2025

Biennale für Freiburg is a new platform for contemporary art in Freiburg. The event formats and artworks developed for the Biennale, created through close collaboration between local actors and invited artists, explicitly reference the city and activate it as a field of experimentation. Freiburg’s hidden stories are revealed, the unexpected is provoked, and moments of interchange and contact are made available. The Biennale’s multi-layered program presents contemporary art beyond institutional spaces, contextualizes local conditions in tension with global issues, and offers new perspectives on the city. The artistic director of the Biennale für Freiburg 3 is Lorena Juan.

Stretching across public spaces, cultural institutions, and artist-run venues, HAPPY PLACE brings together local and international artists who explore the complex interrelations between environment, mobility, leisure, and travel. Each exhibition site follows a distinct thematic focus, shedding light on specific facets of this broader subject.

Many of the works in HAPPY PLACE critically engage with the ideologies of leisure tourism, while at the same time proposing counter-models to dominant ways of thinking and acting. Within this framework, tourism becomes not only an object of critique, but a speculative site of possibility. Artistic positions respond by adopting distinctive forms of expression—employing humor, exaggeration, and satire to unsettle perspectives, rewrite dominant narratives, and imagine new futures. Within these constructed landscapes, moments of disruption and transgression emerge—alternative ways of narrating, moving through, and inhabiting space.

The third edition of the Biennale für Freiburg will be accompanied by a multi-layered supporting program aimed at deepening the content of the exhibition while opening up new perspectives on the interdependence of tourism, urban development, and global power structures. Performances, workshops, and discussion formats will raise questions around commercialization, exoticization, and belonging, while historical and contemporary narratives of tourism and travel will be critically questioned. The supporting program not only opens up modes of engagement with the exhibitions of the biennale but also expands the thematic debate to include additional facets. Through the participatory formats, the Biennale für Freiburg 3 pursues a process-orientated approach by inviting the public to take an active part in the discussion. In this way, the city not only becomes an exhibition venue, but also an object of investigation itself — a lively space for artistic reflection and social debate.

Artists: !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Cem A., Esvin Alarcón Lam, Irene de Andrés, Céline Baumann, Jonas Brinker, Paloma Contreras Lomas, Enar de Dios Rodríguez, Patricia Domínguez, Elisa Duca, Anna Ehrenstein, Elyla, Lena Marie Emrich, Agnes Essonti Luque, Irene Fernández Arcas, Inka & Niclas, Ida Kammerloch, Monika Emmanuelle Kazi, Cosima zu Knyphausen, Left Hand Rotation, Randa Maroufi, Caroline Mesquita, Noha Mokhtar, Isabel Motz, Claudia Pagès Rabal, Marie Popall und Louisa Raspé, Ghita Skali, Christina Sperling, Eve Tagny, Florian Thate, Helena Uambembe, Unofficial Hiking Society, Jasmin Werner, Daniela Zambrano Almidón, Karla Zipfel, etaïnn zwer.

Team: Lorena Juan (Artistic Director), Isabel Francos Hohmann (Assistant Curator), Dieu Thanh Hoang (Art Medietion & Outreach), Dr. Sascia Bailer (Head of Production & Exhibition Management), Pia Quast (Intern), Lana Eichenhofer (Intern)

The Kunstverein Freiburg is one of the venues of the exhibition. More information about current events can be found on our website, social media, and via the newsletter.

Programme

Thu, 5 Jun 2025, 12 pm
Opening of the exhibition venues

Thu, 5 Jun 2025, 12:30 pm
Curatorial Guided Tour with Lorena Juan,
Meeting point: Kunstverein Freiburg 

Thu, 5 Jun 2025, 6 pm
Opening Event
Location: Schauinsland mountatin station

Thu, 5 Jun 2025, 9 pm
Party with DJ Zutzut
Location: Slow Club

Fri, 6 Jun 2025, 5 pm 
Artist Talk with Noha Mokhtar and Prof. Dr. Birgit Hopfener
Location: Kunstverein Freiburg 

Fri, 6 Jun 2025, 7 pm 
Activation of the Biennale-Pavillons with Irene Fernández Arcas
Location: Skulpturenpark Faulerbad 

Sat, 7 Jun 2025, 10 am 
Unofficial Tourism Agency, 
Performative Intervention and Audiowalk by Unofficial Hiking Society AG,
Meeting point: Münstermarkt

Sat, 7 Jun 2025, 11 am 
Die Kartoffelhexe: an Andean Interpretation of Hansel and Gretel, 
Performance for children and adults by Daniela Zambrano Almidón,
Location: Johanneskirchplatz

Sat, 7 Jun 2025, 7 pm 
Screening of the film Vestiges and Artist Q&A with Enar de Dios Rodríguez,
Location: kulturaggregat 

Sat, 14 Jun 2025, 11 am
Field Trip to the Central Mining Site of the Federal Republik of Germany in the Barbarastollen in Hintertal with Isabel Motz

Sat, 14 Jun 2025, 7 pm
Reading and discussion with Sinthujan Varantharajah,
Location: Skulpturenpark Faulerbad

Sun, 15 Jun 2025, 4 pm
Curatorial Guided Tour with Lorena Juan (english), 
Meeting point: Kunstverein Freiburg

Sun, 22 Jun 2025, 4 pm
Guided Tour,
Meeting point: Kunstverein Freiburg

Fri–Sat, 27–28 Jun 2025
Stadt, Land, Fluss – Network meeting for cultural players of the tri-border region (german/french), 
Location: Basler Hof 

Wed, 2 Jul 2025, 4 pm
Travel and migration, 
Reading aloud and handicrafts for children with KiKaffee from zusammen leben e.V., 
Location: Skulpturenpark Faulerbad

Fri, 4 Jul 2025, 4 pm
Guided Tour with the Sozialdienst muslimischer Frauen e.V. (german/arabic),
Meeting point: Kunstverein Freiburg

Wed, 9 Jul 2025, 6 pm
(De)Composing Spaces for Coexistence,
Workshop with Ilaria Biotti,
Location: Kunstverein Freiburg
(english)

Wed–Thu, 9–10 Jul 2025, 1-5 pm
Utopien einer Stadt: Zusammenleben im Wandel,
Symposium,
Location: Literaturhaus Freiburg

Thu, 10 Jul 2025, 6 pm
1 ⭐ Review Tour by !Mediengruppe Bitnik with Selena Savic & Gordan Savicic,
Meeting point: Literaturhaus Freiburg

Sat, 12 Jul 2025, 11 am
Hiking through Weingarten – a view of the city of Freiburg from below, Tour with Tomas Wald, Roma Büro e.V.

Sun, 13 Jul 2025, 4 pm
Guided Tour by young people from the Weingarten Children’s and Youth Center,
Meeting point: Kunstverein Freiburg

Sat, 19 Jul 2025, 11 am
From surety to Pensionopolis: Freiburg 1800 – 1914, Tour with Dr. Heinrich Schwendemann

Fri, 25 Jul 2025
Lecture Performance by Elisa Balmaceda
(english)

Sat, 26 Jul 2025, 4 pm
Workshop and walk with Jeanne Ange-Wagne
Location: Skulpturenpark Faulerbad

Sat, 26 Jul 2025, 6 pm
Closing with music and food performance by Agnes Essonti Luque in cooperation with the Sozialdienst muslimischer Frauen e.V.
Location: Skulpturenpark Faulerbad