A Friend in Berlin

A Friend in Berlin is a series of events that centercentre on the Fellows of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program and their connections to the city. It explores the format of a meeting and a conversation with an old friend or a new acquaintance, who has been based in the city for longer or has arrived recently. Through conversations, readings, screenings, and performances, artistic peers come together to share their practices and stories and follow lines of thought, discovering shared interests, and considering the different ways they are situated within and connected to the city of Berlin.

This event centerscentres on a conversation between artists and new confidants Ciwas Tahos and Martin Toloku (both Visual Arts Fellows 2026). Interlacing performance and conversation, they trace the paths between their practices, their common interests in rituals and natural materials, and the questions that continue to bring them into conversation.

Ciwas Tahos, also known as Anchi Lin 林安琪, works with a quiet insistence. Her practice does not announce itself loudly, yet it carries a steady pull – attentive, self-determined, and collaborative. Ciwas, who is of Atayal and Hō-ló descent from Taiwan, works across performance, moving image, cyberspace, ceramic instruments, and field-based gestures in the mountains. One senses a person who listens closely before acting, as she weaves Tayal worldviews into forms that breathe with movement and relation.

Martin Toloku is a multidisciplinary artist from Ghana whose practice spans carving, installation, video, studio work, live performance, and collaboration with humans and animals, particularly termites. Working with dead and decaying wood collected from rivers, forests, lakes, and his surroundings, Toloku explores decay, death, life, time, space, and nature. Through conceptual and performative compositions, he investigates decay as metaphor, creating emotionally and spiritually charged encounters that invite audiences to confront questions of mortality, transformation, and the cycles of life.

The talk is in English.

For more information and the most recent event updates, please visit the website of DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program or Instagram @daad_artists.