All posts tagged: Biennial

Here is the Artist List for the 16th Gwangju Biennial

Here is the Artist List for the 16th Gwangju Biennial

Published by Jenni Sidey

The 16th Gwangju Biennial, opening this fall in South Korea (Sept 5-Nov. 15, 2026), has announced the names of the 40-some artists and groups who will be included in the exhibition. The list was first published by e-flux. The Biennial’s curator, “fast-rising” Singaporean artist and filmmaker Ho Tzu Nyen, was announced in April 2025. Ho represented Singapore at the 2011 Venice Biennale, and organized the Asian Art Biennial in 2019. The title of Ho’s show, “You Must Change Your Life,” is drawn from the last line of Rainer Maria Rilke sonnet “Archaic Torso of Apollo.” The show focus on the continuous practice of change and transformation. Related Articles The inaugural edition of the Gwangju Biennial opened in 1995, and it has become one of the most well-known biennials in Asia. Previous curators have included big names on the international exhibition circuit, among them Okwui Enwezor (2008), Hou Hanru (2002), and Harald Szeemann (2012). For the 16th edition, Ho is working with assistant curators Che Kyongfa, Park Gahee, Brian Kuan Wood, Lee Yein, and Koyuri Sato. …

Kulapat Yantrasast to Lead 2027 Bukhara Biennial in Uzbekistan

Kulapat Yantrasast to Lead 2027 Bukhara Biennial in Uzbekistan

Published by Jenni Sidey

Kulapat Yantrasast, the architect behind major museum projects for institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Louvre, has been named artistic director of the 2027 Bukhara Biennial in Uzbekistan. The appointment comes less than a year after the debut edition of the biennial, which drew an estimated 1.8 million visitors and quickly became one of the most talked-about events on the international art calendar. Conceived and commissioned by Gayane Umerova and the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation (ACDF), the next edition will run from September 3 through November 21, 2027. Related Articles For much of last fall, it was difficult to walk through Chelsea or Tribeca without running into someone who had just come back from Bukhara.  Collectors, curators, museum directors, artists, and journalists from Los Angeles to London to Hong Kong descended on the ancient Silk Road city for the inaugural edition, helping turn what had once been an unlikely destination for the international art crowd into one of the season’s must-see events. Yantrasast succeeds Diana Campbell, artistic director of the Samdani Art Foundation in Bangladesh, who …

Artist Kader Attia Will Organize 2027 Edition of India’s Top Biennial

Artist Kader Attia Will Organize 2027 Edition of India’s Top Biennial

Published by Jenni Sidey

Kader Attia, an acclaimed artist whose work is currently included in Koyo Kouoh’s main exhibition of the Venice Biennale, has been selected to curate the 2027 edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India’s top biennial. Attia, a winner of France’s Prix Marcel Duchamp, may be best known for his sculptures and installations that seek to rectify the violence of colonialism in North Africa, but the Berlin- and Paris-based artist has curated at least one notable biennial previously. That show, the 2022 Berlin Biennale, was celebrated in some corners for its emphasis on artists of the Global South. But it was denounced in others after a group of Iraqi artists pulled out of the show, protesting a French artist’s work that featured graphic images of tortured Abu Ghraib detainees. Related Articles His selection continues a tradition of artists helming the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. The most recent edition, which opened at the end of last year, was organized by artist Nikhil Chopra, who worked on the show with HH Art Spaces, an artist-run space based in Goa. And in …

Sharjah Biennial Announces 109 Artists for 2027 Edition

Sharjah Biennial Announces 109 Artists for 2027 Edition

Published by Jenni Sidey

The Sharjah Art Foundation has announced the title, curatorial framework, and artist list for the 17th Sharjah Biennial, set to run from January 21, through June 13, 2027. Titled “What remains, sits restive,” the exhibition will bring together 109 artists across sites in the emirate, including Sharjah City, Al Dhaid, Khorfakkan, and the Kalba Ice Factory. The edition is co-curated by Angela Harutyunyan and Paula Nascimento, who have structured the project around themes of unrealized social projects and the capacity of the past to animate the present. According to a statement from the foundation, the curators will present related but distinct perspectives. Related Articles Harutyunyan, a professor of contemporary art and theory at the Berlin University of the Arts and a founding editor of ARTMargins, will engage 55 participants in a conversation on “the various afterlives of socialist modernity,” particularly as they intersect with anti-colonial struggles and modernization, while the 54 artists selected by Nascimento—an architect based in Luanda and former associate curator of the Lubumbashi Biennial—will explore infrastructure as an intersection of memory, moment, …

Frieze New York to Include Whitney Biennial Commission

Frieze New York to Include Whitney Biennial Commission

Published by José Betancourt

In just over a month, Frieze New York will open its 2026 edition, which will include several institutional collaborations and a new acquisition fund. Scheduled to run May 13­–17 at the Shed with more than 65 exhibitors, Frieze New York will partner will the Whitney Museum, the Dia Art Foundation, and the Counterpublic triennial, to present a suite of performances and installations both in and out of the fair. The most high-profile of these is Frieze’s collaboration with this year’s Whitney Biennial. At the fair, artist Jonathan González will present Body Configurations (2023­–25), a photographic installation of six C-prints commissioned for the Biennial that will be displayed on the sixth floor of the Shed. Related Articles During the fair’s run, from May 15–17, González will also realize the durational performance magic hour–golden time (2026), which will be staged on some of the Whitney’s exterior terraces, including ones not accessible to the public, as well as the High Line. “An important and compelling young voice in contemporary performance, Jonathan González creates durational works that often engage …

Precious Okoyomon’s Whitney Biennial Installation Is a True Shocker

Precious Okoyomon’s Whitney Biennial Installation Is a True Shocker

Published by José Betancourt

Earlier this month, the Whitney Biennial went on view to the usual amount of fanfare—but one work was notably missing from the show. That work, a room-filling installation by Precious Okoyomon featuring stuffed animals and racist dolls suspended from the ceiling by nooses, was initially meant to appear in the lobby. But shortly before the exhibition opened to the press, the artist and the show’s curators pulled the plug on that plan. The issue, Okoyomon told ARTnews this week, was not the piece’s disturbing subject matter but a more practical problem: they felt they needed more space to realize such an ambitious project. “It didn’t work,” they said of the initial lobby idea. The dolls and animals “needed to be lower. You have to engage with them in a place where you can look at them and be with them.” Related Articles We met on the Whitney Museum’s the eighth floor, where their installation, titled Everything wants to kill you and you should be afraid (2026), finally went on view Wednesday. Cupping their poodle, Gravity, …

Shrine Sculptor in Whitney Biennial Dies

Shrine Sculptor in Whitney Biennial Dies

Published by Jenni Sidey

Agosto Machado, an artist and activist associated with the Downtown New York art scene whose altar sculptures currently appear in the Whitney Biennial, died on Saturday following a brief illness. In keeping with his own wishes, his gallery, the New York–based Gordon Robichaux, did not announce Machado’s age in the obituary it sent out on Sunday. Speaking of his decision never to publicly share his birth year last year, Machado said, “A lady never tells.” Within the art world, Machado is now recognized as an artist, though he has also been described variously as an archivist and an activist. In interviews, he opted for a different descriptor: “pre-Stonewall street queen.” Related Articles An active participant in the Stonewall uprising of 1969 and the Gay Liberation Movement of the 1970s that followed, Machado was part of a circle that included activists such as Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera; artists such as Peter Hujar, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, Jack Smith, and Andy Warhol; and multi-hyphenates such as Candy Darling, Mario Montez, and Stephen Varble. Through his performances at …

Whitney Biennial Artists Explore Boundaries Between Human and Machine

Whitney Biennial Artists Explore Boundaries Between Human and Machine

Published by Jenni Sidey

As I stood in the Whitney Museum’s sixth-floor gallery for the opening of this year’s Biennial, I found the eye of a surveillance camera, iridescent and round as a soap bubble, staring back at me. It was implanted in a rectangular body the color of aging plastic, decades-old desktop computers, and exposed bone. There was also a small embedded LED screen marking hours, months, days, and years, but since what was not clear. I was about to walk away, confused, when the voice of an elderly woman echoed out, full of warmth and experience. “It was a combination of too little sleep, too many chores, and a teeny tiny toddler,” she said cheerily. “Not to mention the supermoon!” I laughed, first in surprise, a wave of affection bubbling up that was quickly quashed by wariness. Related Articles The work, Estate (July 10, 2022), by Cooper Jacoby, surfaces an emergent genre of horror seeping through the mass consciousness: that of measurement and quantification. Jacoby made the work by scraping text from deceased creatives’ social media and …

A New Public Art Biennial Will Launch Along the Katy Trail in Dallas

A New Public Art Biennial Will Launch Along the Katy Trail in Dallas

Published by José Betancourt

The Katy Trail, a 3.5-mile urban greenway in Dallas, will be the venue for a new public art biennial launching in Spring 2027. The KTX Biennial will unfold across the length of the Katy Trail, and the works will be on view for up to 18 months, the approved length for a temporary public work in Dallas. New York–based curator Jovanna Venegas will organize the inaugural edition of the KTX Biennial. The Katy Trail runs through three Dallas neighborhoods, Uptown, Knox, and Highland Park, and is free to the public and open from 5am until 11pm. Conceived of as a public-private partnership in 1997, the Katy Trail is an early example of converting former rail lines into green space. It now sees some 2 million visitors. Related Articles “We thought that the most beloved trail in the city of Dallas, the Katy Trail, made a lot of sense of the location for a public art program,” Amanda Dillard Shufeldt, art director of the Katy Trail, told ARTnews in an interview. The forthcoming biennial builds on …

Maia Chao, Art World Anthropologist, Makes Her Whitney Biennial Debut

Maia Chao, Art World Anthropologist, Makes Her Whitney Biennial Debut

Published by José Betancourt

Drawing from her background in anthropology, Maia Chao often approaches art with an observation, then a question: Where does the art in doctors’ offices come from? How do you make a living as an artist? Building on these inquiries, often through mimicry or replication, leads to works that can make the mundane feel absurd, beautiful, or troubling. So it was with filler words. In the 2016 audio work Hesitation Particles,Chao interviewed native speakers of 31 different languages to collect samples of “hesitation particles”––used in most languages to mark a pause or hesitation in speech, as with “um” in English. Chao’s resulting composition is atmospheric—like being immersed in a crowd of global strangers deep in thought. Another project, “A Picture of Health (2022),” began with the weird art in a doctor’s office. After a particularly excruciating three-hour stay in a waiting room, where she stared at a landscape painting––“arguably one of the longest times I’ve contemplated a single work of art,” she told me––she staged an exhibition of paintings borrowed from the offices of 27 local …