by Henrietta Landells
Amidst the disorientation that follows our re-emergence from an extended period of isolation and uncertainty, curator Cecilia Alemani presents Milk of Dreams, a large-scale matriarchal gathering bringing the work of over 200 contemporary artists from 58 countries to Venice, together with works by a selection of historical female artists from the 19th century onwards.
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by Maria Lind and Anca Rujoiu
So, what do biennials do? Or more specifically, what did this biennial – the Art Encounters Biennial 2019 – do? Some possible answers are already on the tips of our tongues; others will come over time. We’d like to think that this biennial made possible a wide variety of encounters between art, the inhabitants of Timișoara and visitors, alike – not only throughout 2019, but also beyond, for a number of artworks will remain in the city, and new relationships have been forged.
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by Vladimir Vidmar
Plagued by problems direr and darker than ever before in history, and more disillusioned than ever, we turn to our everyday to find fragments of inspiration that could potentially ignite the spark of change. Such is this case with the 33rd Biennial of Ljubljana, entitled Crack up, Crack down, where its curators, the artist collective Slavs and Tatars pose a question: In the era of post-truth, can a joke set us free?
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Anne Murray, talks to Sadek Rahim and Tewfik Ali Chaouche, curators and co-founders of the Mediterranean Biennial of Contemporary Art of Oran.
What makes the Oran Biennial unique is the city and its people, who are open to Mediterranean cultures and to the world – they are welcoming and curious about contemporary art. On the economic plane, Oran is the 2nd largest city in Algeria after the capital. With the oil terminal of Arzew and its industrial zone, Oran has been rapidly growing since 2010. As part of the urban development, the city has invested in the restoration of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Oran, where the biennial is held this year. What makes the Biennial in Oran unique is also its grassroots character – it is independently run by a civic cultural association, without any involvement by state authorities.
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by Andrew Stefan Weiner
The obvious reason that some critics have cast Szymczyk and his team as morally superior “social justice warriors” is that it is much easier to fling stereotypes than it is to work through the complex implications of the fundamental message that this documenta means to communicate. At the core of this sprawling, wildly ambitious, sometimes incoherent, but certainly worthwhile exhibition lies a deceptively simple proposition: that art can and should serve the cause of justice, but not always in the ways we might expect.
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by Zeenat Nagree
Outsiders occupy a unique position to look in, to observe or to critique. Patterns and characteristics that are unrecognisable or even irrelevant to insiders come to the fore; insights gained and buried layers exposed. Such encounters are commonplace in the art world, unremarkable almost. Yet, the depth and complexity brought by these encounters deserves particular attention when they involve artistic transactions, sites of visibility, and history writing – occurring in the context of large exhibitions, such as biennials or triennials.
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by Andrew Stefan Weiner
It might be that some degree of controversy at the Whitney Biennial is inevitable, given its oft-stated ambition to somehow “take the temperature” of contemporary American art. Yet to agree to this objective is first of all to admit that such a thing is even possible and furthermore that it is desirable, when in fact neither of these points is exactly self-evident. Why shouldn’t some Biennials be more limited and thematic, rather than comprehensive?
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by Elizabeth Derderian
The question of infrastructure looms large in the UAE, as a biennial organization becomes an art foundation, as major museums are under construction, and as Dubai’s commercial galleries continue to proliferate.
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by John L Tran
The nine conceptual zones, which include explorations of cultural identity, post-colonialism, agency and psychogeography, are a love letter to critical thinking. With titles like A Presence of Pasts and A Somewhere of Elsewheres it has to be said that the letter is written in purple prose, and a little overdetermined, but still – not bad for an art festival in a country that has draconian gum laws.
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by Robert E. D’Souza and Sunil Manghani
Far from the recognised centres of contemporary art of Mumbai and Delhi, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale has generated a great deal of interest among the art fraternity. Now into its third edition, the Biennale’s ‘creation myth’ still pervades with nostalgia for how – ‘against all odds’ – it came to fruition.
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by Shwetal A. Patel
The co-curators of the inaugural exhibition ‘Histories of a Global Hub,’ Zhang Qing (Founding Director of the Shanghai Biennial and Curatorial Head of the National Palace Museum in Beijing) and Roger M. Buergel (Artistic Director of documenta 12 (2007) and Director of the Johann Jacobs Museum in Zurich), set out to eschew what they saw as the ‘largely exhausted’ biennale format. Describing the latter as a ‘bouquet of arbitrary themes’ with an emphasis on spectacle, they argue for the value of depth and sensitivity in bringing together the ancient and modern in a sustainable, yet rigorous manner.
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by Terry Smith
When we look back at the century plus history of recurrent survey exhibitions of contemporary art––those we call biennials, triennials, and (at Kassel, itself expanding) documentas––we can see that they slowly established a set of distinctive protocols, that were formalized during the 1980s, then rapidly replicated throughout the world, while at the same time steadily increasing in size and scope.
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