Talks
Melanie Roumiguière
If the Berlin Wind Blows My Flag – Curating at the Intersection of Archives and Artistic Practice
21 November 2025
In her lecture Melanie Roumiguière will explore the archive as both a site and material for curatorial practice. Using the project If the Berlin Wind Blows My Flag as a starting point, we will discuss how archival resources can be activated in contemporary curating to challenge dominant narratives and foster inclusive, non-hierarchical forms of knowledge production.
If the Berlin Wind Blows My Flag—a project co-curated with Nora Lukacs—investigates the relationships between artistic resistance, archival traces, and cultural memory, particularly in the context of post-war and Cold War Europe. Through this lens, the talk will reflect on the potential of archives not only as repositories of history but as dynamic spaces for artistic intervention and curatorial experimentation.
The seminar will focus on questions such as: In what ways can archival materials be understood and utilized as artistic material? How can curators work with archives in ways that resist institutional hierarchies and open up access to diverse voices and perspectives?
Participants are invited to engage critically with examples from the project and contribute to a broader discussion about 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.