Biennials & Triennial
The eighth edition of the Mercosur Biennial situates art in a privileged place; it discovers through the works of 105 artists from 31 countries a close relationship with the political events of our time without losing sight of the poetic.
As the plane approached Dublin airport, the greenest of fields visible below, it suddenly hit me why the name The Emerald Isle is forever memorialized in Johnny Cash’s overwrought lyrics of Forty Shades of Green.
The 11th Lyon Biennial proposes to visitors a “journey through imagination”. Combining humor and tragedy, poetry, provocation and utopia, the works of 78 international artists from 25 countries, created largely as statements, seek to “put the debate on art and reality on the table”.
The curatorial statement of Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial), 2011 specifies the biennial’s intention to “explore the rich relationship between art and politics, focusing on works that are both formally innovative and politically outspoken, honest, controversial and critical.”
The Mercosur Biennial opened its eighth edition last week with Ensayos de Geopoéticas (Essays in Geopoetics), dedicated to explore from the unique perspective of art, political and territorial issues which bring into play concepts such as nation, state, identity, maps and borders.
In the words of Brazilian artist Nuno Ramos, the 29th São Paulo Biennial apparently marks the “end of the curatorial narcissism” that characterized recent editions, in particular the past edition, universally known as “The Void.”
