Big Mouth Comedy Club

Big Mouth, glass neon, 1,5m x 1m, 13th Berlin Biennale 2025
© Mila Panić; eastcontemporary; image: @worksdocumentation

For her contribution to the 13th Berlin Biennale, Panić sets up the comedy club Big Mouth, which borrows the aesthetics of an established venue, complete with a lineup of international comics (Deo Katunga, Maya Upchurch, Carmen Chraim, Victor Patrascan, Sasha Dolgopolov, Tamer Katan and more).

You enter the throat of Big Mouth through a series of ironic self-portraits. Downstairs, in the belly of KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Panić’s jokes unfold into a narrative that draws on the tradition of the “jester’s privilege,” offering sharp critiques of our indifference to the lives of war-refugees, immigrants, and their children – lives too often left unseen.

Thick Tongues, fine art posters, self-portraits with drawing interventions, 59.4 x 84.1 cm, 13th Berlin Biennale 2025, © Mila Panić; eastcontemporary; image: Eberle & Eisfeld

Fragments of her jokes are written on the walls in neon, taken from her stand-up comedy, which explores the existential crisis of the immigrant – a condition that persists as a string, setbacks and moments of survival–while also confronting the complicated contours of victimhood.

Her stories and humour are rooted in her own experience growing up in, and eventually leaving her native Bosnia, a country devastated by war in the early ’90s, driven by nationalist ambitions and territorial disputes. Language, once a tool of identity, became a weapon that deepened division. The ensuing atrocities created vast diasporas, displacing people into foreign lands where they were met with fresh forms of discrimination.

Stand-up comedy holds a powerful place in the collective consciousness, especially in a world saturated by media aligned with power. It has become a double-edged instrument: while right-wing populist movements have weaponized its reach, comedians who punch up – who challenge power, who mock governments, who refuse to flatter the status quo – often pay a price. Many have faced censorship or even imprisonment, their words reverberating far beyond the club stage.

Mila Panić does not title her installation and comedy club Big Mouth for the easy associations with satire, but for the courage it takes to speak boldly, with tongue-in-cheek humour—where gravity in not abandoned, but rather deliberately argued through wit.

Installation view, Big Mouth Comedy Club, 13th Berlin Biennale 2025, © Mila Panić; eastcontemporary; image: Eberle & Eisfeld

The Game Was To Collect The Set, glass neon, variable dimension, 13th Berlin Biennale 2025, © Mila Panić; eastcontemporary; image: @worksdocumentation

23 Chairs and 6 Tables engraved with various jokes, tags, thoughts; 13th Berlin Biennale 2025, © Mila Panić; eastcontemporary; image: @worksdocumentation

Mila Panic

Big Mouth Comedy Club