“It is spring. The blossom is on the trees. My daughter dances in the kitchen. Her thick hair is dark and wavy. It is beautiful. It is the same as my hair, a little lighter. I have never seen my hair this way though. I cut my hair off when I was 15. People loved my hair. They’d always comment on it, touching it. How thick and black and heavy it was. Its difference. I hated it. Being looked at. Evaluated. I cut it off, bleached it. The peroxide burning my scalp. And I felt free. For a time. I have felt ashamed as long as I remember. Of my hair, body, skin, teeth, eyes, accent, clothes. Of where I’m from, of not knowing where I’m from. Of money, having none or having some. Of working, of not working. Of not getting the right shows, of doing the wrong shows. Of not doing something, of doing something wrong. Of not being good enough, of not being enough. Always inadequate, frightened, hidden, hiding, wrong. And always so sure of this wrong, never stopping to question its right. The validity of its claim. Of rightness. That things might be upheld because it allows others to be held down. A shame that shuts us up, hollows us out. A protection that serves to hide us from each other and ourselves. It repeats at every level. Stop. Here is my removal, here is what is always removed. What is left is not nothing, it is everything. Everything that is already happening. Release. See, the sun feels good on your skin. The water is cold at first but you get used to it. Take my hand, we have everything we need already.”

– Ghislaine Leung

List of Works

Budgets, 2025

Score: The exhibition budget is displayed.

Maintenance, 2025
Score: The exhibition space is left as it is.

n.b.k. Edition, 2025
Objects no longer in n.b.k. use.

n.b.k. Edition, 2025
Objects no longer in n.b.k. use.

n.b.k. Edition, 2025
Objects no longer in n.b.k. use.

n.b.k. Edition, 2025
Objects no longer in n.b.k. use.

n.b.k. Edition, 2025
Objects no longer in n.b.k. use.

Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) presents Berlin’s first solo exhibition by British artist Ghislaine Leung. Based on a rigorously conceptual yet deeply personal approach, Reproductions explores the administrative, financial, and infrastructural processes of exhibition-making through a series of new works. By employing strategies of withdrawal and refusal, Leung focuses on the reproductive aspects of institutional labor that decisively shape the outcome of artistic production and reception, but typically remain hidden. Reproductions foregrounds these activities, shifting attention to the many processes beyond the artist that are required to create and maintain the perceived neutrality of the contemporary exhibition format.

Ghislaine Leung (*1980 in Stockholm, lives in London) has presented her work in numerous solo exhibitions, including: Kunsthalle Basel; The Renaissance Society, Chicago (both 2024); Simian, Copenhagen (2023); Ordet, Milan; Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach (both 2021); Netwerk, Aalst / Belgium; Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (both 2019); WIELS, Brussels (2016). In 2018, she published her book Partners (Cell Project Space), followed by Bosses (Divided) in 2023. In 2023 she was nominated for the Turner Prize.

Discourse program

Thursday, June 26, 2025, 7 pm 

Trust Issues. Exhibiting as a Practice of Trust 

Panel discussion with Layla Burger-Lichtenstein (curator, n.b.k.), David Joselit (Professor of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge / USA) and Abbas Zahedi (artist, London), moderated by Antonia Kölbl (editor-in-chief, TEXTE ZUR KUNST). 

A project by Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) and TEXTE ZUR KUNST

In English

Thursday, July 24, 2025, 7 pm 

Ghislaine Leung, Holdings (2015–2025) 

Book Launch with Ghislaine Leung and Karsten Lund (Senior Curator, The Renaissance Society, Chicago) 

In English

Free admission to all events