guests

Lynhan Balatbat-Helbock is a curator and researcher at S A V V Y Contemporary Berlin and is part of the participatory archive project "Colonial Neighbours". She received her MA in Postcolonial Cultures and Global Policy at Goldsmiths University of London and moved to Berlin in 2013. In her work within the permanent collection of SAVVY Contemporary she looks for colonial traces that are manifested in our present. The collaborative archive dedicates itself to discussing silenced histories and to the decanonization of the Western gaze through objects and the stories behind them. In close collaboration with artists, initiatives and activists, the archive is activated through hybrid forms of practice. She assisted the management for the documenta14 radio program - Every Time a Ear di Soun, SAVVY Funk in Berlin (June - July 2017) and supported the artist Bouchra Khalili with several projects and exhibitions (May 2015 - May 2016 / June 2021 -May 2022).  She worked on a yearlong research project on Julius Eastman in a collaboration between SAVVY Contemporary and the Maerzmusik festival (Berliner Festspiele, March) and co-curated the exhibition program HERE HISTORY BEGAN. TRACING THE RE/VERBERATIONS OF HALIM EL-DABH (2017–2018/2020-2021).  In 2018 she produced Agnieszka Polska ś commission for the Germany’s National Gallery Prize show in the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin (September 2018-March 2019). Lately she curated the yearlong project Monumental Shadows – Rethinking Heritage, a participatory project in public space knocking colonial figures off their pedestal and shifting the shadows of past and present.

pic. from the private archive