In Conversation
Jay Afrisando
4 Sep–23 Nov 25
Opening: 3 September 5 pm
A collaborative exhibition by artist Jay Afrisando
in collaboration with Dea Karina, Ariel Orah, Morgan Sully, Saverio Cantoni, and Simoné Goldschmidt-Lechner, also workshop participants Alexis Bacon, Gaia Martino, hany tea, Kandis Friesen, M.D., MINQ, RC Taube, Rory Mason, and Terry Perdanawati.
Disability, community and interdisciplinarity are the focus points of this exhibition, which explores how different artists affected by access barriers communicate and create art. Rather than offering fixed answers, In Conversation invites reflection: What does an art exhibition look like when it involves communities with varied perspectives on disability? How do they creatively and critically respond to societal barriers? How do they navigate interdisciplinary collaboration across a diversity of access needs and desires?
In Conversation embraces a discursive, process-driven methodology and welcomes open-ended outcomes. It features collaborative works created by Jay Afrisando and members of his communities through individual conversations, group discussions, and workshops. Collaborators include diverse artists (in a broader perspective) – some living with disabilities, while others do not identify as disabled yet experience systematic and physical challenges.
The resulting artworks showcase short films, installations, physical games which can be played in the gallery, and live performances. They interweave sound, visual, tactile, and psychological experiences rooted in a collaborative creative process centering Crip Time. The result are artworks that evolve organically, growing patiently and surely through biological time, like plants. This process emphasizes collective intelligence as a generative force, shifting the role of the artist from individual author to attentive facilitator. Arriving at an important moment in Berlin, when the city’s cultural landscape is under threat, the exhibition provides a platform for the exchange of new and innovative ideas between crip and other marginalised artists working in the Berlin art scene and beyond.
Accessibility Information:
Information about the accessibility of the gallery itself can be found on our About Us page.
At the opening, interpretation between spoken German and German Sign Language is planned for the speech, afterwards communication assistance will be provided.
There is a tactile guidance system on the floor for blind visitors.
All videos have subtitles.
There is information about the exhibition in Braille, German Sign Language and plain language in the gallery.
The interactive artworks are accessible for wheelchair users.
Accompanying programme
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Opening with Performances
3 Sep 25 , 5.00–9.00 pm
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Captioning as Sounding: Sound Description Workshop
4 Sep 25 , 4.00–6.00 pm
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Exhibition Tour
5 Sep 25 , 7.00–8.30 pm
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Reading group with COVEN BERLIN
10 Sep 25 , 7.00–8.30 pm
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Workshop for Families and their Friends
17 Oct 25 , 3.00–5.00 pm
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Reading Group with COVEN BERLIN
29 Oct 25 , 7.00–8.30 pm
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Closing with Coffee, Cake and Performances
23 Nov 25 , 3.00–5.00 pm
About the artist
Jay Afrisando is a neurodivergent composer, multimedia artist, researcher, and educator. He works on aural diversity, disability, accessibility, and decolonizing arts, manifested in music-theater, film, installation, witty storytelling, and other genre-bending experiences.
His works have been presented through solo exhibition (Curb Appeal Gallery, US, 2023), institutional exhibition (UCSC Institute of the Arts and Sciences, US, 2024), group exhibitions (ARTJOG, ID, 2024; Sound Scene at the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum, US, 2023 & 2022), performances and screenings (daadgalerie, DE, 2025; TanzFaktur, DE, 2024; Constellations Chicago, US, 2024; HERE Arts Center, US, 2023; Zeitgeist’s SOUNDING GROUND, US, 2023; ARGOS Centre for Audiovisual Arts, BE, 2021; Walker Art Center, US, 2021), and artistic workshop and accessible podcast (Refuge Worldwide, DE, 2025). He has collaborated with curators (Dr. Rachel Nelson, Sandy Guttman, Ignatia Nilu) and artists and culture bearers (Saverio Cantoni, Simone Goldschmidt-Lechner, thingNY, Third Coast Percussion, Zeitgeist, Andy Slater, Jamil Haque, and Gelsey Bell, among many). He has been awarded the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin 2024 and the MAP Fund 2023, and was recently awarded the Young Artist Award 2024 by ARTJOG for his short film on sign language and voice, Aural Architecture.
Curator: Dr. Kate Brehme is a disabled independent curator and arts educator based in Berlin. Kate has worked in Australia, Scotland and Germany on a variety of independent projects, exhibitions and events, and as an arts educator for organizations such as The National Galleries of Scotland. In 2017, Kate co-founded Berlinklusion, a collective of artists and arts mediators with and without disabilities who create inclusive arts projects and provide communities and arts organisations with advice on access. Together, Berlinklusion has advised organisations such as KW Institute for Contemporary Art, HKW, The Bauhaus Archive and Documenta, and initiated projects including UNBOUND, Germany’s first accessible transdisciplinary residency program.
Kate’s recently curated exhibitions include Queering the Crip, Cripping the Queer, an exhibition on Queer/Disability History, Activism, and Culture (the Schwules Museum, 2022-23), The Space Between (CLB Berlin, 2023), and Unruly Splendour: Exploring Nature Through the Spectrum of Bodies (Galerie in Körnerpark, 2024). Kate is a member of the Berlin Arts Council and the European Arts and Disability Cluster and lectures on Disability Art Studies at the University of the Arts, Berlin.
Team
Head of exhibition design: Carolina Redondo
This exhibition was invited by the Galerie im Turm and Frances Breden.
Curatorial assistance: Mareike Lange & Milena Leto
Lead graphic design: Dani Hasrouni
Lead invigilator: Daniela Schoepe
Exhibition production team: Juan Saez & Diego Contardo
German Sign Language videos: Dana Cermane
Braille text: Medienzentrum Zeune-Schule
Support: Stéphane Bauer, Sofía Pfister
Gallery invigilators: Dilara Buzoglu, Antonia Döß, Jennifer Fink, Josepha Holdenried, Lara Jablonski, Maximilian Kaiser, Tetiana Kornieieva, Luca Kramer, Hannah Papendieck, Polina Piddubna, Marlene Risse, Luise Sandberger, Laura Seif, & Fides Stürmann.
In Conversation is supported by the DAAD Artists-in-Residence Program in Berlin, the University of California, Santa Cruz, the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion, and the Exhibition Fund for Communal Galleries. The Galerie im Turm is run by the municipal government of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg.
