Together with the Sao Paulo, Havana and Medellin biennials and the Trienal Poli/gráfica de San Juan, the Cuenca Biennial –Bienal de Cuenca(Ecuador) – belongs to the select group of established events in Latin America that promote contemporary art.
This 12th biennial is based on an open thought, in which the works trace constellations that outline a group of themes which are independent yet closely intertwined. The chosen themes deal with issues that are central to contemporary art production and, metonymically, to society as a whole, and which can have repercussions in a context as historically and culturally stimulating as Ecuador and, in particular, Cuenca.
The choice as a title of the event of the Ecuadorean idiomatic expression Ir para volver [lit. to leave only to return] – which is widely used to describe a temporary absence (the duration of which nearly always turns out to be unforeseeable) – is linked to this preference for open discussion and for plural viewpoints. In addition to hinting at the state of constant movement that characterises the majority of the works and artists included in the exhibition, it sets out to place the 12th Cuenca Biennial in an open and indefinite context of oral communication, of dialogue under constant construction as opposed to the rigidity of an inflexible and finished discourse – that is, in the context of life itself.
The conceptual cornerstones of this year’s biennial are, first and foremost, negation of the supposedly privileged status of the artist. In some cases this results in works that are nomadic in the sense of their physical movement and of the outsourcing of the physical side of their production, which often involves industrial means.
Complementing and clarifying these issues, it also brings together artists and works that refute the validity of single and general systems for measuring time and space, suggesting the impossibility of reducing the world to uniform criteria. The need to appropriate the world in a real, direct, actually experienced and unmediated manner signifies an effort to create a personal logic that can be applied both to the countless ways of imagining the passage of time, the length of a road, the boundaries of a country, a period or a city, and to episodes of great historical importance and symbolic value that become tools for understanding the present day.
AC/E is collaborating with the biennial through the mobility programme of the PICE, by supporting the participation of the Spanish artists chosen by the biennial: Manuel Segade, Patricia Esquivias, Daniel Steegman and Nestor Basterretxea.
This 12th biennial is based on an open thought, in which the works trace constellations that outline a group of themes which are independent yet closely intertwined. The chosen themes deal with issues that are central to contemporary art production and, metonymically, to society as a whole, and which can have repercussions in a context as historically and culturally stimulating as Ecuador and, in particular, Cuenca.
The choice as a title of the event of the Ecuadorean idiomatic expression Ir para volver [lit. to leave only to return] – which is widely used to describe a temporary absence (the duration of which nearly always turns out to be unforeseeable) – is linked to this preference for open discussion and for plural viewpoints. In addition to hinting at the state of constant movement that characterises the majority of the works and artists included in the exhibition, it sets out to place the 12th Cuenca Biennial in an open and indefinite context of oral communication, of dialogue under constant construction as opposed to the rigidity of an inflexible and finished discourse – that is, in the context of life itself.
The conceptual cornerstones of this year’s biennial are, first and foremost, negation of the supposedly privileged status of the artist. In some cases this results in works that are nomadic in the sense of their physical movement and of the outsourcing of the physical side of their production, which often involves industrial means.
Complementing and clarifying these issues, it also brings together artists and works that refute the validity of single and general systems for measuring time and space, suggesting the impossibility of reducing the world to uniform criteria. The need to appropriate the world in a real, direct, actually experienced and unmediated manner signifies an effort to create a personal logic that can be applied both to the countless ways of imagining the passage of time, the length of a road, the boundaries of a country, a period or a city, and to episodes of great historical importance and symbolic value that become tools for understanding the present day.
AC/E is collaborating with the biennial through the mobility programme of the PICE, by supporting the participation of the Spanish artists chosen by the biennial: Manuel Segade, Patricia Esquivias, Daniel Steegman and Nestor Basterretxea.