Umut Azad Akkel

Haus am Lützowplatz | Berlin, Germany

SAHA supports Haus am Lützowplatz within the scope of Umut Azad Akkel’s new exhibition, “Holding My Drink in the Corner”, on view between 13 June - 16 August 2026.

Holding My Drink in the Corner is an interdisciplinary art project by Berlin-based artist Umut Azad Akkel and Istanbul-based curator Ozan Ünlükoç, developed over an extended period to engage with social dynamics and experiences of migration. It comprises a solo exhibition at Haus am Lützowplatz featuring several works, some of which are conceived specifically for the site, as well as the installation of the large outdoor scaffold sculpture The Path in close proximity.

Holding My Drink in the Corner is an exhibition critically engaging with notions of navigation, belonging, and inclusion within queer experience. Drawing on the framework of the Cretan Labyrinth, the exhibition approaches the difference between those who have access to knowledge and rules and those who do not; it exposes how even spaces presumed to be inclusive can produce exclusionary codes.

Umut Azad Akkel (b. 1991, Izmir) studied Industrial Design at Kadir Has University in Istanbul from 2010 to 2014. From 2016 to 2022, he studied Fine Arts at the Berlin University of the Arts, most recently as a Meisterschüler in the class of Ina Weber. He received the DAAD Prize for International Students in 2020, the Playground Art Prize (2nd place) in 2021, and the Else Neumann Scholarship of the State of Berlin in 2022. His recent exhibitions include presentations at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Kunst Raum Mitte as part of BPA// Exhibition 2025 (Dec 6, 2025 – Jan 11, 2026).

About Haus am Lützowplatz (HaL)

Haus am Lützowplatz (HaL) is an exhibition and event space under the direction of the art association „Haus am Lützowplatz – Fördererkreis Kulturzentrum Berlin e.V.“, founded in 1960. It was formed in the trying times of the cold war, a year before the wall was built in West Berlin, with the aim of reviving an existing cultural center at Lützowplatz. The founding members were personalities from the Berlin SPD, from the worker unions and from the Berlin cultural scene. In alignment with the promotional, informational and educational aims of the association statutes, the main focus lies on the presentation of contemporary visual arts, in connection with political and societal reality.