Biennial Manifesta 13 Marseille Announces Its Full Programme

Martine Derain, Paradise ©Martine Derain. Image courtesy of Manifesta.

Manifesta 13 Marseille
Traits d’union.s
August 28, 2020 – November 29, 2020
https://manifesta13.org

The Artistic Team (Katerina Chuchalina, Stefan Kalmár, Alya Sebti) of Manifesta 13 Marseille’s central exhibition Traits d’union.s announces its 47 participants and an exhibition devised into 6 plots: The Home, The Refuge, The Almshouse, The Port, The Park and The School. These plots will open successively from the 28th of August until 9th of October, after which they will be on view concurrently until the 29th of November 2020.

Marseille is marked by endless transit. It is a continuous site of arrival and departure, providing space for escape and sanctuary. At the same time, Marseille epitomises resistance and has always offered unique moments of tension. Marseille is an exceptional city within the European matrix: the ultimate unresolved city – in perpetual motion, revolving around multiple centres, historic and informal. Marseille’s infinite histories, biographies and stories inform its lenticular existence. Marseille resists any linear categorisation. Marseille has no single identity.

Traits d’union.s proposes new alliances and rehearses new forms of collectivity, within and across Marseille’s existing cultural institutions:

By introducing different voices, the artistic team activates the possibilities that these institutions might still hold, temporarily expanding their narratives outwards and inwards, giving way to a more permeable, more open, and more vulnerable conditions. The exhibition thus proposes new forms of publicness which may leave these institutions better equipped to speak to some of the challenges of the 21st Century:

“We never thought of Manifesta 13 Marseille as a ‘full stop,’ but always as a hyphen, or rather hyphens – as traits d’union.s – a gesture of bringing together. Yet, we find ourselves in a situation where reality amplifies, indeed exhilarates some of our underlying thoughts, dreams and nightmares. Suddenly with all the predicaments of our present moment, you realise the urgency with which art can speak to the uncertainty of our times.”

The Artistic Team of Manifesta 13 Marseille: Katerina Chuchalina, chief curator V-A-C Foundation, Moscow; Stefan Kalmár, director ICA, London and Alya Sebti, director ifa gallery, Berlin.

Hedwig Fijen, Director of Manifesta:

“Manifesta 13’s Traits d’union.s reflects on crucial  issues which are prominent in Marseille, yet also reverberate across the world. The artistic team and the participants have both individually and collectively addressed issues that have become increasingly important in the face of recent events. This allows for local, national and international audiences to come together in Marseille and use the city as a lens through which to look into our shared global issues. At the same time, the city also offers alternative models – a key step in the process of transformation.”