LA BIENNALE DE LYON 2011

www.labiennaledelyon.com
Preview: 13 – 14 Sept. 2011
From September 15 through December 31, 2011

Commissaire invitée : Victoria Noorthoorn
Directeur artistique : Thierry Raspail

La 11ème édition de la Biennale de Lyon se tiendra du 15 septembre au 31 décembre 2011.
Elle accueillera 70 artistes venus du monde entier, sur 13 000m² d’exposition répartis sur 4 lieux : La Sucrière, le macLYON, la Fondation Bullukian, l’Usine T.A.S.E.

11th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art
A Terrible Beauty Is Born

The 11th Lyon Biennale will include the participation of 78 artists from around the world—mostly from Europe, Africa, and Latin America—who will present their work at the four venues designated for the event. Entitled A Terrible Beauty is Born, after a phrase from William Butler Yeats’ poem Easter, 1916, the Biennale brings together seemingly opposing elements. We find this structure of productive contradiction interesting.

This Biennale proposes to question the prevalent state of confusion that currently exists in the arts, where art is primarily conceived as an article of consumption for the economic market. The idea behind the event is to construct an exhibition that is conceived as a web of discourses where works communicate with each another like individuals, in order to create meaning and to showcase various worldviews.

The 11th Lyon Biennale was conceived in Buenos Aires, in South America, for and in conjunction with Lyon. The artists who participate in the exhibition were invited after coming to the organizers’ attention during trips through Europe and Africa last year. They were selected on the merits of their individual work and not as representatives of their respective countries or regions of origin.

In many instances, artists were invited because their works were bound to establish a dialogue with other participating proposals. That is to say that they were invited to resolve specific issues or to interact with other artists. This exhibition is thus the result of a great series of conversations, a modus operandi that stems from a belief in the power of dialogue for the development of any project.

The 11th Lyon Biennale strives to be relevant, alive. If it could be considered an animal or a beast, it would willingly be one. When pushed to be at war with itself in order to address the inexplicability of the present and the power of art, it will do so unwaveringly.

About the Biennale, curator Victoria Noorthoorn explained that, “For the creation of the 11th Lyon Biennale, historically a Biennale d’auteur, I have chosen to do as artists do: to grope, in the midst of a darkness that may or may not grow lighter as I advance, from point to point and from work to work, oriented by my obsessions, intuitions, and fears, and by the leads and provocations that each of the participating artists have thrown along my (that is, our) way. I have worked and traveled so that this show does it all at once: to address the uncertainty of the present and the near future, to speak about the condition of the artist and the necessity of art, while leaving the door open to doubt, to contradiction, to perplexity, to change and to movement.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
Gabriel Acevedo-Velarde, Ayreen Anastas & Rene Gabri, The Arctic Perspective Initiative, Zbynek Baladran, Ernesto Ballesteros, Lenora de Barros, Hannah Van Bart, Eduardo Basualdo, Samuel Beckett & Daniela Thomas, Erick Beltrán, Diego Bianchi, Guillaume Bijl, Pierre Bismuth, Arthur Bispo do Rosário, Katinka Bock, Ulla von Brandenburg, Fernando Bryce, François Bucher, John Cage, Augusto de Campos, Marina de Caro, Center for Historical Reenactments, Virginia Chihota, Robbie Cornelissen, Julien Discrit, Marlene Dumas, Morton Feldman, Robert Filliou, Stano Filko, Aurélien Froment, Alberto Giacometti, Milan Grygar, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Arturo Herrera, Michel Huisman, Jessica Hutchins, Yun-Fei Ji, Christoph Keller, Lúcia Koch, Eva Kotátkova, Robert Kusmirowski, Luciana Lamothe, Moshekwa Langa, Ruth Laskey, Kemang Wa Lehulere, Christian Lhopital, Laura Lima, Jarbas Lopes, Jorge Macchi, Cildo Meireles, Laurent Montaron, Bernardo Ortiz, The Otolith Group, Sarah Pierce, José Alejandro Restrepo, Tracey Rose, Alexander Schellow, Gabriel Sierra, Elly Strik, Neal Tait, Javier Téllez, Barthélémy Toguo, Erika Verzutti; Judi Werthein; Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, and Héctor Zamora, among others.

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