Vancouver Biennale Announces Fourth Edition

Ajlan Gharem, Paradise Has Many Gates, 2015-2018

Vancouver Biennale
re-IMAGE-n
June 2018
http://www.vancouverbiennale.com

The Vancouver Biennale announces its fourth edition, titled “re-IMAGE-n”, launching June 2018, with projects unfolding over the exhibition’s two-year duration. Under the artistic direction of Barrie Mowatt and curatorial leadership of Marcello Dantas and Jeffrey Uslip, the Biennale invites international artists to respond to the prevailing issues of our time, including the widespread refugee and migrant crisis, a global shift towards nationalism and isolationism, and an intensifying drain on our shared natural resources. Projects will “re-IMAGE-n” (reimagine) a progressive social framework that supports free speech, Reconciliation and the rights of First Nations, LGBTQ rights, artistic freedom, gender, racial and sexual equality, ecological awareness, religious freedom, and the ethics of biotechnology.

The Biennale’s artworks will evolve in freely accessible and often unexpected public locations throughout Vancouver. Mowatt will produce interventions with Jessica Angel (Columbia/USA), Ajlan Gharem (Saudi Arabia), Yoko Ono (USA/Japan), Douglas Coupland (Canada), Inuk Silis Høegh (Greenland), Marc Johnson (Benin/France), Maskull Lasserre (Squamish/Canada), Sahej Rahal (India), and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun (Coast Salish/Okanagan). Dantas will organize site-specific sculptures with Makoto Azuma (Japan), Ibrahim Mahama (Ghana), Patricia Piccinini (Australia), and Ishmael Randall Weeks (Peru), among others.

Uslip will curate an expansive series of projects under the curatorial aegis “This Is Not America” that thinks through various cultural, social and political pressures placed on individuals, the environment and aesthetics in our current cultural climate. The exhibition’s title summons Alfredo Jaar’s seminal artwork, A Logo For America (1987), as its point of origin to engage dialogue and debate. Participating artists include Miguel Adrover (Majorca), Geoffrey Farmer (Canada), Anya Gallaccio (United Kingdom), General Idea (Canada), Ken Gonzales-Day (USA), Dan Graham (USA), Jenny Holzer (USA), Alfredo Jaar (Chile), Simone Leigh (USA), Monica Majoli (USA), Daniel Joseph Martinez (USA), Paul Pfeiffer (USA/Philippines), Arcangelo Sassolino (Italy), Clement Siatous (Chagos Islands), Gary Simmons (USA), and Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie (Seminole/Muscogee/Dine’). In addition, Uslip assembled a team of curatorial advisors including Linda Norden, New York-based art historian and independent curator and Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie, Professor of Native American Studies and Director, C. N. Gorman Museum, University of California, Davis.

By bringing diverse audiences together with artists who offer a multiplicity of perspectives, aesthetics, lived realities and cultural histories, the 2018-2020 Vancouver Biennale provides evolving opportunities to reimagine art’s agency in public space.

The city of Vancouver provides a distinct framework for the exhibition; it is a city beautiful in landscape, sincere in its multiculturalism, and earnest in its socially progressive ethic, but arguably one with as much impasse as utopia. For example, Vancouver’s “Green City Action Plan,” designation as a City of Reconciliation, progressive drug policies and aggressive affordable housing strategies, are in stark contrast to being at the epicenter of Canada’s opioid epidemic and its double-digit increases in homelessness. In spite of this dichotomy, Vancouver is progressive, thoughtful and forward thinking: it is a city that strives to look at the failure of its best intentions as a roadmap to build a better future.

The Vancouver Biennale will honour Yoko Ono with its 2018 Distinguished Artist Award, a recognition that coincides with reissuing the acclaimed artist’s 2007 Biennale installation, “IMAGINE PEACE,” marshalled at this critical time to re-inspire a global consciousness towards unity, harmony, and accord. Yoko Ono’s project exemplifies the Vancouver Biennale’s mission for diverse communities to gain access, visibility and representation.

In keeping with the Vancouver Biennale’s commitment to its Artist-In-Residence program, Zarina Laalo, Vancouver Biennale Curator of Ancillary Projects, and Michael Suh, Executive Director for the Museum of Contemporary Art Beijing, will collaborate with the Biennale’s curatorial team to award approximately thirty early-career international artists with grants to reside, create and exhibit public artworks and interventions throughout the city over the next two years. Laalo’s inaugural public program, “Weaving Cultural Identities,” is an initiative that brings First Nations weavers and graphic artists together with local South Asian, Central Asian, and Middle Eastern Muslim communities to collaborate and celebrate their diverse cultural knowledge and self-identification. “Weaving Cultural Identities” is a platform for dialogue and an opportunity to honour shared land.

Joella Cabalu, Director of the Vancouver Biennale’s film program, CineFest LIVE, will focus on the significant contributions of women filmmakers in their commitment to exposing the gender, racial and social inequalities of women. CineFest LIVE will showcase films by and about women cinematic pioneers from the 1920s to 40s as well as early and mid-career Muslim women storytellers to create counter narratives to the mainstream media’s portrayals. The Vancouver Biennale will honour First Nations, Canadian-American filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin with its “Artist of Distinction for Advancement of Women in Film” award in recognition of her thirty-year career providing visibility to First Nations issues.