Biennials to look forward to in the first half of 2025!
Open Call for Artists at Biennale Gherdëina
3 January 2025
Have you already made your travel plans for 2025? As the new year starts we want to make sure you are aware of all the exciting and inspiring biennials which will be opening in the first half of the year. Of course we are aware we cannot be everywhere all the time so we will make sure to cover most of these also through our IBA Stage event, however experiencing art first hand is an essential part of it. So here is an overview of biennials scheduled to take place between now and our General Assembly which will take place in June in Santa Fe (NM) – June 30th to July 3rd.
We begin with an ongoing biennial that started in 2024, early IBA member and board member biennial:
14th Bamako Encounters – African Biennale of Photography
Dates: November 16, 2024 – January 15, 2025
Location: Bamako, Mali
Celebrating its 30th anniversary, KUMA (the word) as the 14th edition of this historical biennial in West Africa is titled, showcases art (with a focus on photography) from the whole continent and beyond with the intention of reflecting on the power of words. As declared by its artistic director Igo Diarra “For artists, it is about exploring new forms, experimenting with dialogues between the word and the image, making plastically exist the moments of speaking, eloquence, anger, but also hope, meditation, silence, cacophony and noise. The word in all its forms, the given word, the whispered word, the big word, the small word, the new word, the old word. The spoken word, the written word, the declaimed word, the narrated word, the sung word, the rapped word, the slammed word.”
2. Bangkok Art Biennale 2024: Nurture Gaia
Dates: October 24, 2024 – February 25, 2025
Location: Bangkok, Thailand
Also ongoing from 20204 is the Bangkok Art Biennial titled Nurture Gaia. Centered on themes of environmental sustainability and cultural heritage, this biennale brings together international artists to explore our shared responsibility toward the planet. Apinan Poshyananda, artistic director of the biennial reflects on the theme by drawing on both mythology and science to guide us through his artistic choices “In Greek mythology, Gaia is a goddess who offers life and nourishment. She has evolved in many forms and is revered as a mother, nurturer and giver of life. References to her have been found in temples, shrines, statues and paintings. In prehistoric times, she was worshiped as the feminine earth mother related to fertility and agriculture; in Hinduism, she is the earth as a living organism symbolized as mother earth Prithvi; in Southeast Asia, she takes on the form of Phra Mae Thorani found frequently in Buddhist scriptures and temples.”
3. Asian Art Biennial 2024: How to Hold Your Breath
Dates: November 16, 2024 – March 2, 2025
Location: Taiwan
The Asia Art Biennial is the last of the biennials that started in 2024 to be still running and you have till March 2nd to visit! This biennial delves into resilience and adaptability, featuring art works that navigate the challenges and hopes of our times.
4. Sharjah Biennial 16 “To Carry”
Dates: February 6 – June 15, 2025
Location: Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
The first biennial to open in 2025 is Sharjah Biennial 16! Opening in February 2025, Sharjah Biennial 16 will be curated by: Natasha Ginwala (Artistic Director, COLOMBOSCOPE, Colombo); Amal Khalaf (Director, Cubitt, London and Curator at Large, Public Practice, Serpentine Galleries, London); Zeynep Öz (independent curator, Istanbul and New York); Alia Swastika (Director of the Biennale Jogja Foundation, Yogyakarta); and Megan Tamati-Quennell (curator of modern and contemporary Māori and Indigenous art, New Zealand). The curators will propose distinct but interconnected projects that will together represent a diverse and global range of perspectives across the spectrum of contemporary art.
The curators are developing projects in dialogue with each other, using the Biennial’s 30-year history as a platform for artistic experimentation and discourse. Ginwala, Khalaf, Öz, Swastika and Tamati-Quennell will individually invite a selection of artists across a variety of backgrounds and disciplines, to highlight both leading and emerging talents in visual art, performance, music and publication. Continuing the Foundation’s engagement with the many communities throughout Sharjah, the Biennial will once again activate venues across the emirate.
Find more info regarding the opening program here.
5. Hawai‘i Triennial 2025 “ALOHA NŌ”
Dates: February 15 – May 4, 2025
Location: Honolulu, Hawai‘i
Also opening in February 2025 is Hawai’i Triennial. With a whole new team, the Hawai’i Triennial is focusing especially on the Asia-Pacific region. ALOHA NŌ. More than a ubiquitous Hawaiian greeting, aloha is a Hawaiian philosophy and way of life. Aloha is an action that embodies a profound love and truth-telling, a practice that has been kept and cared for by the people of Hawaiʻi for generations. This practice of aloha engenders a deep connectivity to ʻāina (land), environment, elements, and each other. By collapsing two, seemingly opposite, meanings—“no” in English with “nō,” an intensifier, in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language)—ALOHA NŌ reclaims aloha from a colonial-capitalist historicity and situates it as a transformative power that is collectively enacted through contemporary art.
Find more info here.
6. Bienal do Mercosul 2025 “Snap”
Dates: March 27 – June 1, 2025
Location: Porto Allegre, Brazil
The 14th edition of the Bienal do Mercosul is opening with the title “Snap” in March 2025. Rubbing the thumb and middle finger to produce a quick noise that expands in space brings together the human body, movement, transience, and sonic matters. Recent studies demonstrate that this noise lasts approximately seven milliseconds; for comparative purposes, the blink of an eye tends to last one hundred and fifty milliseconds. It is a voluntary gesture that for the human experience is related to different uses and interpretations: musical composition in genres such as blues, samba, jazz, and rock n’ roll; a call to action; inducing and awakening in acts of hypnosis; the domestication of other animals; the attempt to recall a word we have forgotten; a request for silence in a classroom; a way to applaud a performance or encourage an ongoing speech discreetly. In a snap of a finger, everything can move.
Read more about Snap and find all the information about the biennial here.
7. Liverpool Biennial 2025 “Bedrock”
Dates: June 7 – September 14, 2025
Location: Liverpool, UK
The UK’s largest festival of contemporary visual art, this biennial transforms the city into a vibrant stage for global artists to present groundbreaking works. This year’s biennial titled “Bedrock” curated by Marie-Anne McQuay, draws on Liverpool’s distinctive geography and the beliefs which underpin the city’s social foundations. It is inspired by the sandstone which spans the city region and is found in its distinctive architecture. ‘BEDROCK’ also acts as a metaphor for the social foundations of Liverpool and the people, places and values that ground all of us.
8. MOMENTUM 13: Between/Worlds – Resonant Ecologies
Dates: June 14, 2025
Location: Moss, Norway
The 13th edition of the MOMEMTUM biennale will be an investigation and celebration of sound and an exploration of the relations between the natural and cultural worlds of Moss, Norway.
MOMEMTUM 13 will take place during the summer of 2025. This edition will be a sonic MOMENTUM, a movement and a moment focused within the (ultra)local, inspired by, and highlighting its human and non-human inhabitants, in the city, forest, fjords and cultural landscape of Jeløy and Moss. The participating artists will take local environments and localities as their impetus and inspiration for further explorations.
Read more here.
9. Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts
Dates: June 14 – September 28, 2025
Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia
As one of the oldest biennials dedicated to graphic arts, this year Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts celebrates its 70th Anniversary with an exhibition curated by Chuz Martinez. The 36th edition of the Ljubljana Biennale, under the artistic direction of Chus Martínez, will be created in cooperation with a number of international partners (to be announced) and national partners including Moderna galerija (Museum of Modern Art), under whose auspices the Biennale was held until the establishment of the International Centre of Graphic Arts in 1986.
10. Helsinki Biennial 2025 “Shelter”
Dates: June 12 – September 21, 2025
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Set in the stunning maritime surroundings of Helsinki, this biennial brings together international artists to engage with themes of coexistence and environmental stewardship.The third edition of Helsinki Biennial will showcase the work of around 35 artists and artist groups across three distinct venues this summer: Vallisaari Island, Esplanade Park, and HAM Helsinki Art Museum. A preview list of the first eleven participating artists has now been announced. Taking Shelter as its theme, this major art event brings a summer-long celebration of art to the Finnish capital from June 8 to September 21, 2025.
Read more here.
11. Berlin Biennale
Dates: June 14 – September 14, 2025
Location: Berlin, Germany
The 13th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art opens to the public from June 14 to September 14, 2025 and is curated by Zasha Colah. As Assistant Curator, the team of the 13th Berlin Biennale warmly welcomes Valentina Viviani. Exhibitions and programs of the Berlin Biennale take place at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, its founding organization, and other locations in the city. In her work as a curator and writer, Zasha Colah explores artistic imagination as well as artistic acts of civil disobedience under conditions of sustained oppression.
Read more here.
12. SACO1.2 Biennial of Contemporary Art “Dark Ecosystems”
Dates: June 24 – September 14, 2025
Location: Atacama Desert, Chile
Focused on contemporary art in one of the world’s most unique landscapes, this biennial addresses themes of isolation, resilience, and human connection. The upcoming edition, SACO1.2, themed “Dark Ecosystems,” is scheduled from June 24 to September 14, 2025. This edition emphasizes the intersection of art and science, drawing inspiration from extremophiles—organisms that thrive in the harsh conditions of the Atacama Desert.
Read more here.
