11th Lyon Biennial

“A terrible beauty is born”, the original verse of the poem "Easter, 1916", by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats − which makes reference to the execution of 15 Irish leaders who launched the independence movement − was the source of inspiration behind the name of the Biennial, assigned to it by its Argentine curator, Victoria Noorthoorn, who explains that she selected the artists based not on their countries of origin but on their aesthetic response to the reality around us.*
The participating works include sculptures, videos, installations, and even a strong presence of drawing, of European and African artists converging with a marked prominence of Latin American art and Argentine artists. The case of the selection of Latin American artists was quite particular. I began by selecting European artists fundamentally because the public attending this biennial is European. My main obsession was how to address the European public, both the public at large and the specialized audience, and once the European artists had been invited, I started to convene different Latin American artists to enrich the conversation − so to speak − and introduce tension in the proposals of European artists, seeking to generate rich, productive relationships; seeking the strength of art. *
At La Sucrière, Kulissen, by Ulla von Brandenburg, a series of heavy theater backdrops − made of thick black, red, yellow papers − receive the visitor, who is propelled towards a world populated by heady works, a very particular instant in which, transformed into an actor, the visitor has no option but to wander in that uncertain labyrinth of very different aesthetics and surprising visual utopias.
Other monumental creations lie in wait for the visitor, among them the enigmatic wooden fortress entitled Stronghold, by the Polish artist Robert Kusmirowski, an installation that reveals its secret when one reaches the first floor: a library with abandoned, inaccessible books; a space without a soul, apocalyptic. The same apocalyptic excess may be found in the creation of the Argentine artist Eduardo Basualdo, El Silencio de las Sirenas, a great maquette of a nightscape; a bloody mare magnum comprising 7,000 square meters of purple water that surges every two minutes in a slow movement, later to disappear, evokes the threats to the planet. Beautiful, terrible, without words. Drama continues with Samuel Beckett’s Breath, a work without actors, the shortest one; only 24 seconds, featuring scenery by the Brazilian artist Daniela Thomas. Only a breath, which accompanied by a flower bed filled with trash swept by a low, skimming light leaves the spectator more defenseless than perplexed. Also outstanding is the installation created by the Brazilian artist Laura Lima, Puxador, a naked man tugging at a series of black straps wrapped round the pillars of La Sucrière as if he wanted to destabilize the building, or the impressive work by Barthélémy Toguo, The Time, an assemblage comprised of 55 stacked wooden coffins with an undeniable symbolic impact, representing the 55 African countries, their suffering and their poverty. This is an exhibition in which the possibilities of tension between the works are constantly explored, and this investigation on tension is the basis for the Biennial’s slogan. Research on how the works may move the viewer, whether emotionally or physically, is always present at the Biennial; there are very small works side by side with works that need to be viewed from a certain distance; the spectators are in constant activity; they cannot relax and look from a distance and say: I already know this, I have already seen it; no, I don’t think I have allowed this to happen. *

The exhibition, conceived around ten itineraries structured like narratives that are linked together and interrelate, offers a constant visual change. On the first floor, the Argentine artist Marina de Caro’s huge ‘seed men’ constitute an interpretative trap. Hombre semilla o el mito de lo posible, a poetic, irresistible but anguishing work, contains dramatic concepts on the need for a new world. On the second floor of La Sucrière, assigned to utopia, the Colombian artist François Bucher’s La nuit de l'homme, and the spaceships and hot air balloons by the Slovakian artist Stano Filko constitute an encounter between science and science-fiction, shamanic experiences and other mysteries. A large space has been assigned to the Argentine artist Ernesto Ballesteros, whose work transcends the specific sphere of art and integrates the notions of astronomy, mathematics, engineering and other sciences. Vuelos de interior, a captivating work, seeks to make the invisible visible: movement, time, the fragility of the instant. Really touching are the historical works of the Brazilian artist Arthur Bispo Do Rosário, who produced most of his work over the course of the fifty years he spent in the psychiatric ward of a hospital. Combining autobiography with everyday objects, he describes his experience of the universe and his belief in God, while he criticizes the dogmatic stances of the Church. Not-to-be-missed is Roberto Jacoby’s almost minimalist and elegant work, El hilo rojo de la historia, a text in which he assures that the money allocated to his work will be donated to the institution in Lyon that commemorates the slaughter of 44 children during the Nazi occupation of that city. Five-euro notes piled up on a pedestal, which the visitor may eventually carry away, accompany the text. Through this piece, Jacoby wishes to face the viewer with the moral dilemma of historical tragedies throughout time and space, an interpretation trap that contains dramatic concepts.

During a year and a half, I devoted myself exclusively to the Biennial and I worked very closely with each of the artists, sharing decision-making, discussing the possibilities of the projects; I have kept the artists informed of the movement of the spaces as the projects progressed; it was a very organic project and I am very happy with the result.*

At the Museum of Contemporary Art − MAC − aesthetic sensibility resumes its rights and shows us around an expanded field of drawing in which the autonomous line assumes a prominent role. It irrupts in an invasive way in the three floors of the building and merges with installations in different materials and with diverse specific weights and textures. This double dimension is channeled through the works of Jorge Macchi, John Cage and his flat sounding music, Henning Lohner, Leonora de Barros, Giacometti and Laurent Montaron, among others. Lines with as much strength as resistance may be perceived in the differentiating poetics of Nicolás Paris, Milan Grygar, Elly Strik, Bernardo Ortiz and Morton Feldman, among others. The deceitfully naïf strokes in the paintings of Hannah Van Bart, Marlene Dumas´s series dedicated to the wall dividing Israel from Palestina, fence visitors in; they silence them. Flabbergasted, they do not know how to react. The Witch, Cildo Meireles’s amazing installation composed of 3000 kilometers of black woolen yarn, devours the whole space of the third story from floor to ceiling. A kind of chaos within an imposed order. The broom may admit different interpretations: it may be perceived as the beginning, the origin of the expansion of the yarn or as the final destination where everything becomes compressed, and contracts. I felt that I had to subjectively enunciate a strong curatorial position in my own terms, so I began traveling and doing research in Europe and Africa, trying to find the tone for one of the most experimental biennials in Europe, which will speak powerfully to Europeans, but also with a fresh spirit. *
Also outstanding in the context of the exhibition are the pattern poems of the great Brazilian poet Augusto de Campo, which irrupt in an invasive way onto all the walls in a permanent dialogue with the works. The Biennial, which occupies a time-space, extends to the Bullukian Foundation, where above all visitors can see Richard Buckminster Fuller’s two cupolas, spatial pieces that talk, from a distance, with the works of Yona Friedma, the young and talented Venezuelan artist Nicolás Paris and Kemang Wa Lehulere. I tried to generate a very active space for the spectator; it is not a biennial that leaves visitors to themselves; it demands a great deal from them. My intention is that spectators return to their homes with something to think about, with something to ponder on, and that they be challenged physically, emotionally, intellectually and resorting to the elements that one is familiar with to be able to make this possible. *

The communicational act ends in the old TASE silk mill, which is hosting the Biennial for the first time. Spectacular and theatrical are the works Marienbad, by the Argentine artist Jorge Macchi, with its life size “jardin à la française”, which reconstructs a scene of Alain Resnais’s film Last Year in Marienbad; the Brazilian artist Laura Lima’s Gala Chicken and Gala Coop, forty chickens disguised in multicolored feathers; or the curious installation created by the Dutch artist Michel Huisman, a large twelve-meter long fish with two heads and two legs that swallows up visitors. The exhibition is the result of a series of conversations, a modus operandi based on the belief in the power of dialogue for the construction of any project. A very radical project, with an enunciative power of its own: highly poetic works and categorically critical with respect to the current state of the world, which make reference to social, racial, economic issues, while at the same time they offer alternatives for a complicated, tumultuous present, like the one Europe in particular is going through. *

Worthy of special applause is the voluminous catalogue for the Biennial, which combines images of works with a delicate selection of fragments of literary texts, in a relationship of need and implication. An edition whose design has a strong impact, and constitutes a nucleus of reflection that cannot be separated from the event.

The staging does not conform to traditional criteria such as nationalities, gender or language similarities, and it succeeds in generating a spacious layout, adequately alternating light and darkness and admitting dissimilar proposals. Each artist participates with several works, which permits a more in depth contact with his/her oeuvre, even though the works of some artists are distributed in the four venues of the exhibit. A setting that creates a true dialogue among the works of all the artists, finally to offer an assemblage of works endowed with a rare consistency. I have tried not to focus on a single theme, or be influenced by regionalisms, but rather to establish an itinerary of works that is clear for the public. I think this is a demanding exhibition in the sense that it is not easy for the artists not to be lodged inside a white cube, isolated as in a fair stand and having your own booth to protect you, but to be in a show where each of the artists holds a dialogue with multiple other works and being able to uphold his/her position in a sound way, and I think each one of them does so, each one of them speaks to his/her neighbor in the exhibit, and to the public at large in a very powerful way. I think all this is due to the fact that there is a great deal of work behind the exhibit, from the artists, above all, and mine too.*
The process of judging, constructing and deconstructing codes on the part of the artists can be clearly detected throughout the biennial, in the same way that the return to the values of identity, of life, and of death can be distinctly perceived. Thus, infinity, the cosmos, the intangible and the immaterial constitute the tours de force of an unexpected dialogue in this exhibition conceived by Victoria Noorthoorn, which breathes intellectual stimulation and freedom of creation.
* Interview with Victoria Noorthoorn, by Patricia Avena Navarro, September, 2011.