The Path | 2026-ongoing | Participatory installation, 6 video-performances and sound

Hide and Seek examines how interpersonal relationships and processes of reckoning shape the city’s urban and socioeconomic structures, and vice versa, by specifically focusing on the queer and immigrant experience in Berlin. The corner structures make the installation into a labyrinth, without functioning as walls.

The work refers to the myths of the Cretan Labyrinth and to the possibility that the Labyrinth never existed as such, but that Knossos city was instead misunderstood as the Labyrinth. The forms and materials allude to Berlin’s underground systems and queer spaces, spaces in which Umut Azad Akkel experiences traumatic conflicts and self-doubt coexisting with freedom and nurturing, empowering connections.

Through video performances, the work introduces a game around this duality, inviting the audience to shift between the roles of Theseus and the Minotaur, as well as the position of simply trying to find a place within the structure. The videos accompanied by a sound work. At intervals, artificial fog surrounds the installation.