UNTIL WE ARE ALL FREE

Seven stations, seven artists, seven performances. This tour will lead the public from cell to cell in small groups. Face-to-face encounters will take place where people once sat in isolation behind locked doors. Through the artistic works, the microcosm of the cell will become the starting point for thinking collectively about justice. What remains is the question of utopia: What might a future in which everyone is free look like? The tour offers a unique opportunity to explore otherwise inaccessible parts of the grounds of Rennelberg Prison.

With: cindy+cate, Mohammad Al Attar, Mark Teh & Faiq Syazwan Kuhiri, Simone Dede Ayivi and Collaborators, Simonida Selimović, Symara Sarai & CHIMI, Zehra Doğan

cindy+cate is an eight-member performance collective based in Braunschweig and Cologne. Since 2020, they have been exploring and critically examining society and its structures through their work, viewing artistic creation and the development of performances as a form of political engagement. cindy+cate consists of theatre educators, dancers, performers, and cultural practitioners, and works collectively within the independent theatre scene of Lower Saxony.

Mohammad Al Attar is Syrian Playwright, Theater maker and Essayist. His work takes place on the boundary between fiction and documentation and has been translated and staged at various international theaters and festivals. He is considered one of the most important contemporary playwrights in the Arab world. His works frequently address social and political transformations in Syria, as well as questions of memory, identity, and exile. He is based now in Berlin and considered an important chronicler of war-torn Syria.

Mark Teh is a performance maker, curator, and researcher based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His diverse, collaborative projects take on documentary, speculative and generative forms, and address the entanglements of history, memory, counter-cartography, and the political. His practice is situated primarily in performance, but also operates via exhibitions, education, social interventions, writing and curating. He graduated with an MA in Art and Politics from Goldsmiths, University of London, and was an inaugural recipient of the Prince Claus-British Council Fellows Award for Moving Narratives in 2024.

Faiq Syazwan Kuhiri is a performer, musician, and digital producer. With Five Arts Centre, he has performed in projects such as Something I Wrote, 2-minute solos - art meets politics, Baling, Version 2020, A Notional History, and Oppy & Professor Communitas, as well as in Lee Ren Xin’s B.E.D. series. Faiq creates his own original music with the rock band Terrer and Sandy Eye. 

Faiq Syazwan Kuhiri and Mark Teh are members of Five Arts Centre, a collective of Malaysian artists, activists, and producers, dedicated to generating alternative art forms and images in the contemporary arts landscape.

Simone Dede Ayivi and Collaborators is a stable network of kind people with exceptional expertise in their respective fields. They specialize in research-based theatre created with care and affection, connecting the past with the present in service of the future.

Simonida Selimović is an actress, director, and writer of Roma heritage living in Vienna. She is known for her work in the Austrian theatre and cultural scene, particularly for projects that engage with issues of migration, identity, and discrimination. Her artistic practice is distinguished by its commitment to amplifying marginalized voices and raising awareness of the lived realities of the Roma community. For UNTIL WE ARE ALL FREE, she collaborates with actor Adrian Selimović.

Symara Sarai lives in Brooklyn. Her choreographic practice navigates the complexities of her personal and cultural histories through movement, sound, and research. At present, Symaara is interested in creating worlds inside of proscenium spaces that create space for queer Black femme anarchical play. She is presently in conversation with how the black femme body can access authentic liberation and autonomy. Among other distinctions, she was named one of Dance Magazine’s “Top 25 to Watch” for 2025. For UNTIL WE ARE ALL FREE she works together with CHIMI.

CHIMI is a Nigerian interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of sound, performance, and visual art. With roots in gospel music and over a decade of collaborative practice, her work explores Black femme legacies, ancestral knowledge, spiritual inquiry, and collective healing. In 2024 she was named a Premiere fellow at Cleveland Public Theater, and most recently named ECHO Artist in Residence at SPACES gallery; in true interdisciplinary fashion CHIMI is forging a path that knows no boundaries.

Zehra Doğan is an artist, journalist, and author from Diyarbakır. As a co-founder of Turkey’s first all-women news agency, she reported on war, displacement, and state violence. Due to her journalistic and artistic work, she has been repeatedly prosecuted and imprisoned. Today she lives in Berlin. Working at the intersection of art, journalism, and political testimony, her practice explores memory, resistance, and freedom. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at Tate Modern in London, the Drawing Center in New York, and the Berlin Biennale.