Cevdet Erek, Courtyard Ornamentation with 4 Sounding Dots and a Shade, 2013, four-channel sound, directional loudspeakers and architectural additions. Installation view © the artist and Mehdi Chouakri. Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation
Expanding Topography
Biennials as portals to inscribe their landscape
By Irina Samsonova
As the number of biennials across the globe continues to grow, it seems these art events are less connected with the local topography. Still, an urban or natural landscape is often understood as a mere exhibition background. In this sense, the Venice Biennale epitomizes this ephemeral scenery-like choice both for permanent pavilions and temporary venues, with little dialogue left between the arts and the city. Conversely, promising results are achieved where a biennial considers its surroundings as a part of its inner structure, as Sharjah Biennial demonstrated with a fruitful conversation between the old and new.
As any city is characterized by its history, whether the layers of the time are visible or still relevant today, the future of Biennials is to become ‘portals’. This architectural reference comes in handy to envision such an art event as the city’s thresholds where the past and present-time encounters. Both modern and historical places, and even abandoned warehouses, form a net across the city map for the local constituencies to exert their agency. Thus, the city space becomes a permeable, porous matter that nurtures Biennial-related messages with new ideas.
Nevertheless, a more city-inclusive biennial comes with its rules. Curators and organizers will have to “inscribe” the biennial into the environment’s veins vs. space appropriation practices. Also, both in-situ communities and foreign visitors will share an existing yet self-renewing framework. Such an approach has been adopted by Manif d’art 9, the Quebec City Biennial in 2019. In essence, a more intimate relationship between the biennial and its environment will inevitably expand everyone’s inner “topography” of today’s perception of art.
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| Do Ho Suh, Rubbing/Loving Project: Company Housing of Gwangju Theater, 2012, Architectural installation created for the Gwangju Biennale in 2012, © the artist and Lehman, Maupin, New York |