BiennialMay 28, 2020
12th Mercosul Biennial, Online
The 12 Mercosul Biennial, under the theme “Feminine(s). Visualities, actions, and affections,” which was suspended following international health recommendations by COVID 19, reinvents itself and experiences in its online version.
The event that was to take place physically starting April 18 at the Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul, at the Memorial do Rio Grande do Sul and at Santander Cultural, is carried out virtually, on a “platform in the process that will continue to grow with new works and proposals to build a 12th Biennial perspective in digital format.”
The title of this Biennial, curated by the Argentine researcher and professor Andrea Giunta, posits a question that refers to the central friction of contemporary democratic culture: “the participation of society from the concept of difference understood as multiplicity and not as separation” as expressed by Denise Ferreira da Silva.
In this version, although most of the artists are Latin American (mainly from Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, although there are also from Uruguay, Colombia, Bolivia, and Guatemala) (virtual) attendees will also be able to enjoy works by artists from the United States, Poland, Canada, Spain, Zambia, Martinique, China, and South Africa. The participation includes more than 70 artists (more are added every day), among which are Ana Gallardo, Liliana Porter, Marcela Astorga, Cristina Schiavi, Claudia Paim, Carmela Gross, Brígida Baltar, Aline Motta, Cecilia Vicuña, Eugenia Vargas-Pereira, Paz Errazuriz, Alejandra Dorado, COCO, Ana Tiscornia, and Eliana Otta, Elina Chauvet, Esther Ferrer, Carole Condé and Karl Beverigde, Gladys Kalichini, Priscila Rezende, and the Guerrilla Girls collective.
The Biennial, Giunta explains, continues the path of decentralization of art, a process that can already be seen in different museums around the world: “They are creating, little by little, decentralized canon collections. A canon that, incidentally, is not only centralist; it is patriarchal, white, and in many cases, classist. They are incorporating works made in Latin America, Asia, Africa, women artists, black artists. It is a critical movement of their own narratives that were in process.”
“The biennials are privileged spaces to analyze the state-of-the-art world. The theme of this edition is at the center of discussions and critical reviews of the artistic canon. The Biennial seeks to bring together radical positions, approach them from an international and Latin American perspective, in addition to contributing to the development of an active map of the political transformation of subjectivities in the contemporary world,” added Gilberto Schwartsmann, director-president of the Mercosul Biennial Foundation and president of the Executive Direction of the 12th Biennial.
On the Biennial’s website, you can see the list of participating artists with their biographies, curatorial texts, photos of the works, and videos that tell in the first person how they are dealing with the social isolation.
http://es.fundacaobienal.art.br/
The event that was to take place physically starting April 18 at the Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul, at the Memorial do Rio Grande do Sul and at Santander Cultural, is carried out virtually, on a “platform in the process that will continue to grow with new works and proposals to build a 12th Biennial perspective in digital format.”
The title of this Biennial, curated by the Argentine researcher and professor Andrea Giunta, posits a question that refers to the central friction of contemporary democratic culture: “the participation of society from the concept of difference understood as multiplicity and not as separation” as expressed by Denise Ferreira da Silva.
In this version, although most of the artists are Latin American (mainly from Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, although there are also from Uruguay, Colombia, Bolivia, and Guatemala) (virtual) attendees will also be able to enjoy works by artists from the United States, Poland, Canada, Spain, Zambia, Martinique, China, and South Africa. The participation includes more than 70 artists (more are added every day), among which are Ana Gallardo, Liliana Porter, Marcela Astorga, Cristina Schiavi, Claudia Paim, Carmela Gross, Brígida Baltar, Aline Motta, Cecilia Vicuña, Eugenia Vargas-Pereira, Paz Errazuriz, Alejandra Dorado, COCO, Ana Tiscornia, and Eliana Otta, Elina Chauvet, Esther Ferrer, Carole Condé and Karl Beverigde, Gladys Kalichini, Priscila Rezende, and the Guerrilla Girls collective.
The Biennial, Giunta explains, continues the path of decentralization of art, a process that can already be seen in different museums around the world: “They are creating, little by little, decentralized canon collections. A canon that, incidentally, is not only centralist; it is patriarchal, white, and in many cases, classist. They are incorporating works made in Latin America, Asia, Africa, women artists, black artists. It is a critical movement of their own narratives that were in process.”
“The biennials are privileged spaces to analyze the state-of-the-art world. The theme of this edition is at the center of discussions and critical reviews of the artistic canon. The Biennial seeks to bring together radical positions, approach them from an international and Latin American perspective, in addition to contributing to the development of an active map of the political transformation of subjectivities in the contemporary world,” added Gilberto Schwartsmann, director-president of the Mercosul Biennial Foundation and president of the Executive Direction of the 12th Biennial.
On the Biennial’s website, you can see the list of participating artists with their biographies, curatorial texts, photos of the works, and videos that tell in the first person how they are dealing with the social isolation.
http://es.fundacaobienal.art.br/
