At all times, art has united people. It speaks a language that is understandable and close to all peoples - the language of images and feelings. Art has an absolutely amazing trait - it helps people communicate and interact without depriving them of their individuality.
The main theme of the 6th Biennale of Contemporary Art held this fall in Moscow was the idea of interaction and commonwealth. "How to live together? A look from the city center in the heart of Eurasia ”is the name of the forum, which lasted 10 days, perfectly reflects the desire of the organizers and participants with the help of art to comprehend the main problem of the modern world.
Events and People
Biennale - so traditionally called festivals of art and culture. As the name implies, they are carried out every two years. The Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, the sixth in the last 12 years, has become a significant event in the culture of Eastern Europe.
The festival was held September 22 - October 1 at VDNH, and exhibitions, forums, performances and meetings occupied not only the entire Central Pavilion, but also took place in many exhibition halls and galleries of the capital as part of the "parallel program". In total, about 40 exhibition venues were allocated for the 6th Biennale of Contemporary Art in Moscow.
Organizers and participants of the festival events
The curators of the project were De Bare from Antwepen, Austrian Nikolaus Schaffhausen, head of the Kunsthalle, and Defne Ayas, head of the Center for Contemporary Arts of Rotterdam
The Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art was established in 2003 by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. FACC and ROSIZO also acted as its organizers. Starting from the 2nd Biennale of Contemporary Art, a specially established art fund joined the organizers, and a bit later the capital’s government.
In the main pavilion of the 6th Biennale of Contemporary Art in Moscow, more than seventy representatives of culture and art, members of the press and critics met. The most important issues of our time were raised at exhibitions, meetings, discussions, primarily related to the problem of the coexistence of cultures.
Projects and guests of the 6th Biennale of Contemporary Art
Along with the basic project, the festival featured the programs of guests invited to the forum, for example, Anisha Kapoor from India, Mikhail Rovner, Yevgeny Antufiev, French artist Louise Bourgeois and others.
Within the framework of the "Special Projects" exhibitions were presented. They took place at various venues in Moscow. The most interesting include the “Wings of Eurasia”, which took place at the Museum of Decorative and Applied Arts. An unusual exposition “Metageography”, on which geographical maps were presented - the work of artists of different times, was deployed in the Tretyakov Gallery. And in the exhibition hall on Kashirka there was a bright and spectacular festival "See the sound."
Interaction in the rhythm of creativity
Are there really those universal values that have been talked about so much in the recent past? This was a key issue in the forums of the Biennale of Contemporary Art. In the days of the festival, Moscow became a huge platform for real cross-cultural research, the results of which were interpreted by guests from a variety of positions.
The seriousness of the approach and the desire of people of art to participate in solving the primary problems of society attracted the attention of representatives of other areas far from painting, sculpture, literature and music: sociologists, economists, historians and political scientists.
Faces of Eurasian Art
Despite the importance of discussions and discussions, the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art is primarily a festival of creativity, so the main guests and participants of the projects were artists from different countries of Europe and Asia, and the main events were exhibitions and performances.
The works of individual masters and studios from France, Greece, Germany, China, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Russia, Ukraine and other countries were presented at more than a hundred exhibitions.
The ambiguous and far from always close to the ordinary viewer contemporary art, however, was shocked by its expressiveness, originality and consonance with the problems of our time. In addition, open meetings were organized with artists such as Maya van Lempute, Suchan Kinoshita, Simon Denis, Burak Arikan, which made it possible to better understand the ideas and thoughts that prompt them to work, in whatever form they are presented.
Art as a process
One could see the work of artists in the process of creating works by them. In the open areas of the Biennale of Contemporary Art, artists from Russia, France, China, and Ukraine created.
Such a massively direct creative process has never been presented in Russia. This endless, at times seemingly chaotic, series of events perfectly reflected modern reality. At the same time, the action itself, taking place at the VDNH venues and beyond, resembled a single colossal performance.
Biennale of Contemporary Art, Yekaterinburg
Moscow is not the only Russian city providing its venues for holding such mass events. In the fall of 2015, the third Ural Biennale of Industrial Art was held in Yekaterinburg.
Its main project included two exhibitions devoted to various aspects of the concept of “Mobilization”, which was understood as the ability to change, abandon the obsolete and move to a new level.
These exhibitions were prepared by the curators of the Biennale Li Zhenhua (Beijing) and Biliana Chirich from Shanghai.
The Yekaterinburg Biennale was called industrial not by chance. Basically, it demonstrated art that reflected the problems of an industrial society, and many of the sites were presented by factories and enterprises of the region, including the Sysert factory of artistic porcelain, the factory of artistic casting of the city of Kasli.
The Ural Industrial Festival lasted three months and was held in 10 cities of the region. During this time, the exhibition was visited by more than 100 thousand people. Thus, the inhabitants of the Ural region got the opportunity to get in touch with the beautiful, which lies in clear lines and concise forms of industrial products.
The Biennale of Contemporary Art, regularly organized in the capital, allows Muscovites to get acquainted with the most interesting and extraordinary figures of European art and present to the world the creations of contemporary Russian artists, sculptors and masters of unexpected performances.