15 years of becoming  

This year, SAVVY Contemporary marks 15 years of perpetual becoming – 15 years of unlearning, reimagining, co-creating community, composing life-worlds, of making & holding space. Fifteen years of radical conviviality, listening forward, diasporic dialogues, and artistic resistance.

This SAVVYBRATION is not just a celebration of the past. It is an acknowledgement of the fact that becoming is never complete, but rather a continuous unfolding, to which we invite you – comrades, kin, co-dreamers – to continue walking and singing with us, to share a meal & music, and to sustain the next chapters of our joined story.

Founded in 2009 by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and activated with its first exhibition in 2010, SAVVY Contemporary is today an artistic organisation, discursive platform, place for good talks, foods and drinks – a space for conviviality and cultural plurilog. As a public and independent organism in perpetual becoming, it is animated by around 20 members and a network of collaborators, co-creating community and communities it breathes with.

The complexities of our neighbourhoods and our planet increasingly demand the active development of response·abilities for ever shifting grounds. Thus, it remains crucial to keep coming together, to keep intersecting worlds, and to keep making and holding space... and time. In doing so, we need to remind ourselves that responding is never limited to an immediate time, and to avoid burning out in the first steps, we need to inscribe our actions within sustainable practices. 

We give thanks to you all for supporting one of the few contemporary art spaces in Germany that center marginalized perspectives outside the Western white cube canon. We continue to persist despite rising costs, shrinking public resources, and an increasingly hostile public discourse because of your generosity.