Röda Sten Konsthall as the organiser of Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA) is delighted to announce the appointment of Nav Haq as curator of the ninth edition of GIBCA.
GIBCA 2017 will run from September 9 to November 19 and take place at Röda Sten Konsthall along with various selected collaborative venues throughout the city of Gothenburg.
Concerning his appointment and the curatorial direction of GIBCA 2017, Haq says:
“I’m very happy to have been invited to work on the ambitious and experimental initiative that is the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art. GIBCA has been extremely positive in responding to my thoughts about the next edition in 2017, for which I will look to engage with some fundamental questions about Europe, the formalisation of its values, and the fine line between protection and violence. I will place emphasis on a subject of core socio-political relevance—that of secularism. What happens to secularism during moments of crisis? What role should secularist thought have in society today? And what might culture do when failed by political regimes? Perhaps it might form some unexpected alliances in working towards new modes of secularism. I’m looking forward to working with GIBCA on a project that I hope is of genuine socio-cultural relevance to Gothenburg.”
Nav Haq is Senior Curator at M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp. Haq’s research as a curator and writer lies at the meeting points of culture and politics, theory and practice. He has considered art’s internationalism, along with its relations to the ‘institution’ of art in the broadest sense of the term, seeking to rethink both. He was previously Curator at Arnolfini, Bristol, and Curator at Gasworks, London. Haq has curated numerous solo exhibitions with artists such as Hassan Khan, Cosima von Bonin, Shilpa Gupta, Kerry Tribe, Imogen Stidworthy, Harald Thys & Jos de Gruyter, Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin, Alexandre Estrela and Otobong Nkanga. Group exhibitions have included Superpower: Africa in Science Fiction (2012) co-curated with Al Cameron; Museum Show—a historical survey of (semi-fictional) museums created by artists (2011); the two-person exhibition The Sea Wall presenting works by Haegue Yang and Felix Gonzalez-Torres (2011); Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie: Class Hegemony in Contemporary Art, co-curated with Tirdad Zolghadr (2006–09); and Contour Biennial 2007, Mechelen, Belgium. At M HKA he co-curated the group exhibition Don’t You Know Who I Am? Art After Identity Politics together with Anders Kreuger in 2014, and he is presently finalising the interdisciplinary exhibition Energy Flash: The Rave Movement opening in June 2016. Haq is on the editorial board of the online research platform for the L’Internationale confederation of European museums. In 2012 he was a recipient of the Independent Vision Award for Curatorial Achievement, awarded by Independent Curators International, New York.
GIBCA is one of the leading Nordic art biennials. With every edition the biennial has grown, offering participants high-quality and progressive experiences of art. GIBCA is an important arena for a comprehensive international cultural exchange in the field of contemporary art. The role of GIBCA is to engage in a series of explorations that deal with the complexity of our contemporary world and present a diversity of artistic positions. GIBCA functions in the interrelated fields of research, artistic creation, and philosophical thought which together provide a vital ground for the probing of meaning and for opening up new avenues for dialogue and exchange. Through the eight previous biennials, GIBCA has established itself as one of the largest international contemporary art events in Sweden.
GIBCA is organised by Röda Sten Konsthall.
The most recent editions of GIBCA have been curated by:
2015: Elvira Dyangani Ose
2013: Katerina Gregos, Claire Tancons, Joanna Warsza, and Ragnar Kjartansson in collaboration with Andjeas Ejiksson
2011: Sarat Maharaj with co-curators Gertrud Sandqvist, Dorothee Albrecht and Stina Edblom