About the work:

The photo was taken in Kreuzberg, Berlin, in November 2024, as Rene Matić was preparing their solo exhibition at CCA Berlin. Titled AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH, the exhibition—recently shortlisted for the 2025 Turner Prize—featured a new series of photographs, installations, and a sound work.

As a stand-alone image, this edition offers a familiar glimpse of Berlin’s landscape: the city’s long-standing tradition of graffiti as a vehicle for political protest and revolutionary expression. The call to “Free All Antifas,” painted along the canal, stems from a transnational leftist movement demanding the release of imprisoned activists and political dissidents across Europe. In the context of the West’s ongoing democratic unraveling—marked by the political fragmentation of both the left and the liberal center—the image gains layers of meaning. The imperative to “free” something or anything today feels increasingly contested, easily distorted, and vulnerable to misappropriation.

Matić’s sensitivity to the subtle grammars of a place—the signs, symbols, and undercurrents that speak beneath the surface—is what distinguishes them as one of the most brilliant young artists of their generation. This snapshot freezes a moment that feels defiant and at risk: a fleeting echo of resistance, a yearning for freedom. It’s an image from the near present, yet already tinged with loss, as if belonging to a bygone past. The reflection of the words in the river mirrors the instability of truth in today’s political theater. Reality appears inverted. Where do we go from here?

About the artist:

Rene Matić (b. 1997, Peterborough, UK) is a London-based artist and writer whose practice spans across photography, film, and sculpture, converging in a meeting place they describe as “rude(ness)”—an evidencing and honouring of the in-between. Matić draws inspiration from dance and music movements such as Northern soul, Ska, and 2-Tone as a tool to delve into the complex relationship between West Indian and white working-class culture in Britain, whilst privileging queer/ing intimacies, partnerships and pleasure as modes of survival.

Since 2017, Rene Matić has participated in group and solo exhibitions at Saatchi Gallery, South London Gallery, Sadie Coles HQ, Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol, and Kunstverein Gartenhaus, Vienna among other places. In 2023, Rene Matić had their first US solo exhibition in the gallery Chapter in New York. Their work has been included in the public collection of many international institutions, such as Tate, Foundation Louis Vuitton, UK Government Art Collection, Arts Council Collection, Martin Parr Foundation, and South London Gallery etc.