THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH DAIL Y EDITION Friday 5 December 2014 Q I U Z H I J I E : C L A I R E R I G B Y . S A N T A N D E R C U L T U R A L : F Á B I O D E L R E , C A R L O S S T E I N V I V A F O T O . D O W N E Y : H A R R Y S H U N K ; C O U R T E S Y O F M A R I L Y N B E L T D O W N E Y , T H E J U A N D O W N E Y E S T A T E EXHIBITIONS 6 Biennials move to a Latin beat after decades of controversy Surge in new and revived South American exhibitions reflects global demand for contemporary art TRENDS São Paulo. Two new Latin American biennials launched in 2014: a biennial in Cartagena, Colombia, and a trien- nial in Sorocaba, an affluent city just over 100km west of São Paulo, Brazil. Anothe r bienn ial is d ue to la unch in October 2015 in Asunción, Paraguay. They join a network of biennials reaching from Montevideo, Uruguay, into Brazil, with its four biennials, along the Andes to Cuenca, Ecuador, and up into the Caribbean, where the 11th Bienal de la Habana—actually a triennial—took place in 2012. The shadows of defunct or dormant biennials hover in the margins—Ushuaia, Santiago, Lima, Medellín—while in Salvador, the capital of the Brazilian state of Bahia, a third biennial was staged this year, after a 46-year hiatus. The Bienal da Bahia began in 1966 only to be abruptly halted in 1968, when the military government closed the show on its second day, confiscating 19 “subversive” or “morally offensive” works an d impri soning th e curator s Juare z Par aíso a nd Rio lan C outinh o. This year’s Bahia biennial, which ran from May to September, featured some of the works from the first and second events, as well as works by artists from more than 20 countries, breaking with the 1968 biennial’s focus on Bahian artists—a controver- sial choice that created a schism at the time, contributing to the death of the nascent event. “I think internationalism is impor- tant for a biennial,” says Alfons Hug, the founding curator of the Bienal de Montevideo (its second edition closed on 22 November). “It needs to have a global reach. When a bien- nial is fixated purely on the local, it’s more like a national salon.” Hug, who organised the Bienal de São Paulo in 2002 and 2004, has organised a long list of other biennials and pavilions, including Latin American and Bra- zilian pavilions at the Venice Bien- nale and the 2009 Bienal del Fin del B u s t o f A l e x a n d e r t h e G r e a t R o m a n , E a r l y I m p e r i a l c o u r t e s y o f P h o e n i x A n c i e n t A r t Park Avenue Armory May 8 - 12, 2015 A F air of Art & D es ign from Antiqui ty COLLECTING ACROSS CENTURIES JUXTAPOSITIONS Held in São Paulo from 26 to 30 November, the second World Biennial Forum took place in parallel with the city’s art biennial, which closes on Sunday. Following on from the rst World Biennial Forum, “Shifting Gravity,” which was held in Gwangju, South Korea, in 2012, this year’s gathering was called “How to Make Biennials in Contemporary Times”. With a programme developed by the 31st São Paulo biennial’s curatorial team—Charles Esche, Galit Eilat, Nuria Enguita Mayo, Pablo Lafuente, Oren Sagiv, Luiza Proença and Benjamin Seroussi—the forum “questioned and provoked” the concept of the biennial, focusing on the “Global South”, and in particular on biennials in Dakar, Istanbul, Jakarta and São Paulo. “We asked people to take a critical, analytical look at biennial subjects, rather than present their own work,” the London-based curator Pablo Lafuente says. The forum arose from a conference held in Bergen in 2009 to discuss whether or not a biennial should be created for the Norwegian city. A triennial, the Bergen Assembly, was rst held in 2013. “We think it’s important that the people who make biennials think about the history behind them,” Lafuente says. “It’s essential to be rigorous. We want to talk about the effects of biennials, and what makes them possible in terms of money, politics and so on—who pays our salaries.” As well as a series of morning workshops for the representatives of international biennials, four major sessions were open to the public covering the topics of archives and biennial memory; what comes after national art competitions and the promotion of cities as tourist destinations; education, ideology and exchange; and the role of art and artists. The forum was co-organised by São Paulo’s Instituto de Cultura Contemporânea. C.Ry. Forum looks at how to make a modern biennial “[Biennials are] a sign of the health of an economy” Juan Downe y’s Mapa Mundi , 1979 (detail) The C hinese artis t Qiu Zhijie worki ng on Map at this year’s São Paulo biennial. Left, the Santander Cultural building in Porto Al egre, Brazil Mundo, held at the southernmost tip of South America in Ushuaia, the capital city of the Argentine province Tierra del Fuego. Acco rding to Hug, one of the secret charms of biennials is their ability, thanks to a combination of scale and institutional clout, to occupy antique and historic spaces. “There is something about the patina of old and ruined spaces that suits contemporary art extremely well,” he says. In Latin America, Hug says, a wealth of colonial architecture in cities like Cuenca, Havana, Salvador and Cartagena allows works, particu- larly installation s and videos, to shine. In southern Brazil, Curitiba’s biennial makes use of some of the ornate mansions once owned by the city’s wea lthy “maté barons”, while in Porto Ale gre, whe re th e Bienal do Me rcos ul is held in odd-numbered years, a col- lection of fine Neo-Classical buildings in the city centre includes the lovely Santander Cultural, a former bank. The São Paulo biennial, on the other hand, has occupied the vast Modernist pavilion created by Oscar Niemeyer since its fourth edition in 1957. This year, Oren Sagiv, one of the biennial’s curators, split the space into three discrete areas in a plan that won approval in the staunchly conservative Brazilian city, where some of the other aspects of the exhibition, with its assertively polit- ical works, have been the subject of controversy. That innate conservatism has also arguably helped to secure the longevity of the São Paulo biennial, which is second only to Venice. For a biennial to last beyond one, two or three editions, Hug says, there needs to be a certain cohesion among the bourgeoisie. “You need two or three people with some authority,” he says. “That works well in São Paulo, and in Porto Alegre, where the local business community is united and well organ- ised behind the cause.” For Josué Mattos, the curator of “Frestas”, the new Trienal de Artes in Sorocaba, which runs until May 2015, the benefits of a systematised biennial process can contribute to a sense that the biennial model is becoming “exhausted”. He says: “There is a danger at a certain point that a long-running biennial can become a festival of art, for better or worse, rather than an event that is constantly problematised. ” What is required, Mattos says, is a commit- ment to mobilising groups of artists with whom it mi ght be possibl e “to raise questions and to instigate”. At the 1981 B ienal de Me dellín, in a work that was censored, the Colom- bian artist Beatriz González made a banner that read: “This biennial is a luxury that an underdeveloped country cannot afford.” “Biennials are synonyms for suc- cessful emerging countries,” Hug says. “You don’t get them in bankrupt countries or in crises; you get them in aspiring countries like Uruguay, Brazil and Colombia. And in Asia, in Singapore, China and Korea. It’s usually a very good sign of the health of an economy and of a society.” “Aspiri ng” is not a term normally associated with Paraguay, one of South Ameri ca’s poore st countri es. But for Royce Smith, the principal curator and founder of Paraguay’s forthcom- ing biennial, Asunción’s rawness and potential make it the perfect host. “I think there is a sense that establishe d biennials have set the goalposts for the operations of mega-exhibitions: what they are, how many people should come, what ‘quality’ of artists should be included,” Smith says. He cites a comment made to him by the Chilean curator Paz Guevara about why the Biennial of the End of the World existed, in remote, far-flung Ushuaia : “Because e veryone ha s the right to the contemporary.” Claire Rigby