FRONT International: An American City
Thursday, April 19, 2018
6:30–8pm
ICI Curatorial Hub
401 Broadway, Suite 1620
FREE and open to the public

Michelle Grabner, Artistic Director of FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, will present on its inaugural edition, followed by a conversation with María del Carmen Carrión, ICI’s Director of Public Programs & Research. They will discuss the critical landscape shaping biennial and triennial exhibitions today. The FRONT Triennial will take place from July 14–September 30, 2018 with Press and Professional Preview Days July 12 & 13, 2018.

The first edition of FRONT is titled An American City. This collaboration with museums, civic institutions, and alternative spaces across Cleveland, Akron and Oberlin, will showcase an ambitious roster of projects, including performance and theater throughout the landscape and built environment. This discussion will investigate how biennials foster dialogue with local and global audiences, address and interpret the politics of localism, the role of regional discourses, and if localism and globalism are the pivotal frameworks for biennials.

Grabner will explore the how primacy of national representation has disappeared as an organizing conceit for biennials in favor of internationalism and why biennials still carry the charge to include new artwork and new artists and the mandate to foreground unfamiliar art worlds. The discussion will also delve into how FRONT in particular will examine the ever-changing and politically urgent conditions of an American city.

This event is free and open to the public. To attend, please RSVP to [email protected] with FRONT in the subject line.