Oslo to launch new art biennial in 2019: Eva González-Sancho and Per Gunnar Eeg-Tverbakk appointed Curators and Ole G. Slyngstadli named Executive Director

The Agency for Cultural Affairs, City of Oslo announces the launch of the City’s first art biennial in public space—a field characterized by complexity, contingency and shifting realities.
The inaugural edition of the Oslo Biennial is set to open in May 2019 and will be curated by Eva González-Sancho and Per Gunnar Eeg-Tverbakk, the curatorial team behind a two-year research-based project entitled OSLO PILOT that has laid the groundwork for the biennial. The name, conceptual framework and format of the biennial will be presented throughout 2018.

The Agency has also named Ole G. Slyngstadli as the Biennial's executive director, who will be responsible for the strategic development, management and positioning of the Biennial and for relating administrative strategies to the vision, content and program created by the two Biennial curators.

Rina Mariann Hansen, Vice Mayor of Culture and Sport, City of Oslo: "The future biennial marks a new phase in the City of Oslo’s ambitious commitment to art and represents another step in Oslo’s long tradition of major art projects in the public realm. By unfolding in public spaces, the biennial will activate the city and merge with its daily life in a way that will inspire and challenge both art practice and its audiences.”

Curators Eva González-Sancho and Per Gunnar Eeg-Tverbakk stated: "The strength, pertinence, and even usefulness of a biennial is highly dependent on the context in which it operates. We believe it is essential to respond to this particular context with informed sensitivity, to enable us to rethink the periodic event so that it may approach art and knowledge production in new and relevant ways, particularly when addressing the shifting and slippery context of the public sphere."

www.oslobiennial.no