Melanie Roumiguière (DAAD): If the Berlin Wind Blows My Flag – Curating at the Intersection of Archives and Artistic Practice
Talks on Curatorial Practice
21 NOVEMBER 2025 / 17:00-19:00
In her lecture, Melanie Roumiguière will explore the archive as both a site and material for curatorial practice. Taking the project If the Berlin Wind Blows My Flag—co-curated with Nora Lukacs—as a point of departure, the talk will examine how archival resources can be activated in contemporary curating to challenge dominant narratives and foster inclusive, non-hierarchical forms of knowledge production. The project investigates the relationships between artistic resistance, archival traces, and cultural memory, particularly within post-war and Cold War Europe. Through this lens, the lecture will consider the archive not merely as a repository of history but as a dynamic space for artistic intervention and curatorial experimentation. Central questions include how archival materials can be understood and used as artistic material, and how curatorial work with archives can resist institutional hierarchies while amplifying diverse voices and perspectives. Participants will be invited to engage critically with examples from the project and to contribute to a broader discussion on the political and aesthetic implications of working with archives today.
Melanie Roumiguière is a cultural worker and curator of Argentinian origin with a background in cultural studies. Currently she heads the Visual Arts Department of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. In this context, she has curated exhibitions with Iman Issa, Renée Green, Malgorzata Mirga-Tas and Patricia Belli, among others. Together with Nora Lukacs, she developed and curated the research and exhibition project If The Berlin Wind Blows My Flag. Art and Internationalization before the Fall of the Wall. She was curator and exhibition director at Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum for Contemporary Art - Berlin, where she was part of the curatorial team of the project Hello World. Revision of a Collection and curated exhibitions with Mariana Castillo Deball, Michael Beutler and Gülsün Karamustafa, among others. She is the editor of the first comprehensive monographs on the work of Mariana Castillo Deball, Gülsün Karamustafa and Minerva Cuevas and is part of various projects, juries and committees in the field of contemporary visual arts in an advisory capacity.
Free admission.
All talks in English.
All times CET/CEST.
On-site participation without registration. Application for online participation: curating.org