3rd Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art

Mobilization

September 9–November 10, 2015
Opening days: September 8–13

Ekaterinburg
Russia

Commissioner: Alisa Prudnikova
Curators: Li Zhenhua (Beijing/Zurich) and Biljana Ciric (Shanghai)

See the list of artists participating in the Main project.

The key term of the 3rd Ural Industrial Biennial is Mobilization, understood here as an ability to change and rise to a fundamentally different level. Curator Li Zhenhua imagines his project, titled No Real Body,as an extreme way to find out if art has a starting point or an original source of creative energy. Biljana Ciric’s exhibition, titled Spaces for Maneuver—Between Abstraction and Accumulation, projects the general theme of Biennial Mobilization through centering the exhibition around the individual body as a site and tool, negotiating individual existence between social abstraction and accumulation, proposing to imagine rather than to produce.

The curatorial concepts will follow the logic of the space of the historic Iset Hotel, which will house a larger part of the Biennial’s programs—the main project, the final exhibition of the Artist-in-Residence program and research projects. The Iset is an integral part of the NKVD residential compound, which became popularly known as Gorodok chekistov (Town of NKVD officers); it is one of the most impressive architectural landmarks of Ekaterinburg and an outstanding example of international constructivist architecture of the 1920s–30s.

Main programs of the 3rd Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art

As part of the Artist-in-Residence program, artists from seven countries visited nine working enterprises of the Ural region from July 13–26, 2015. This trip constituted a research stage of the program, allowing the artists to immerse themselves into different stages of manufacturing process and prepare a series of site-specific projects.

See the list of artists participating in the Artist-in-Residence program

The Biennial’s special project will continue a study of the industrial theme in art initiated by curator Kirill Svetlyakov in his exhibition Modern Art Museum: The Department of Labour and Employment, prepared for the State Tretyakov Gallery. The exhibition will be presented at the Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts and will use part of the museum’s collection.

The Ural Federal University has become a strategic partner of the Biennial’s intellectual platform for the third time and will host an international symposium “Strategies of Mobilization” with Pierre Belanger (Princeton School of Design), Sarah Wilson (Courtault Institute), Anthony Gardner (Oxford, Ruskin School of Art) and other international intellectuals as guest speakers.

The Biennial’s performance platform will take place in a former Ural Worker Printing House and will consist of a promenade-theater, a dance performance and a special poetic concert specifically designed for the site and the occasion. It will draw upon the region’s performing arts cluster, including the drama school of Nikolay Kolyada and the world-famous contemporary dance companies.

Image: Nguyen Trinh Thi. In Smoke and Clouds. Videostill, 2015.Courtesy Ural Industrial Biennial.