coculture is an independent, Berlin-based non-profit cultural institution founded in 2017 by conceptual artist Khaled Barakeh. Grounded in a belief in art’s transformative capacity, it connects contemporary artistic practice with social and political concerns, including public memory, justice, artistic freedom and civic practice.

Its remit spans cultural production and the systems through which culture is commissioned, circulated, documented, interpreted and sustained. Its work is grounded in collective agency: artists and cultural practitioners participate in determining the institutions, narratives and structures through which their work enters public life. Accordingly, coculture works with artists connected to the Global South as authors of contemporary cultural life, challenging institutional framings that reduce their practices to illustrations of geography, displacement or cultural identity.

The institution develops physical spaces, conceptual frameworks and digital platforms for production, exchange and collective organisation. Its programmes include exhibitions, festivals, conferences, public programmes, archives and participant-led civic initiatives. Each responds to its context while contributing to shared knowledge, professional relationships and a coherent institutional practice.

TheIndex.Art, a digital platform, maps, documents, presents and connects artists, artworks and cultural knowledge, beginning with Syrian modern and contemporary art. Art for Justice & Accountability connects artistic practice with public memory and demands for truth and justice. The Little Syria develops a bottom-up, participant-led model of civic organisation in Jaramana. The Syrian(s) Biennale is being developed as a transnational biennale anchored in Damascus, with decentralised programmes across Syria and active nodes in Beirut, Istanbul and Berlin.

Through community-building, cultural production, transnational coordination and financial management, coculture sustains collaboration among practitioners, cultural institutions and state bodies, particularly where artists and cultural fields remain institutionally underrepresented.

In 2026, coculture established a twinning partnership with ثقافة مشتركة (Thaqafa Mushtaraka), a new sister institution in Damascus also founded by Khaled Barakeh. Its name is the literal Arabic translation of coculture. The partnership supports locally rooted cultural production and institution-building while sustaining reciprocal collaboration across Syria and its diasporas, without positioning any geography as the centre or relegating others to the periphery.

Learn more about coculture’s Missions, Objectives and Values.

Visit some of our past Projects.
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Read how and why the institution was born: From Necessity to Structure: coculture’s first chapter

Get in touch to become a cooperator, partner, funder, supporter, assembly or team member, or just a friend of coculture :)