21st Biennale of Sydney
Is there an idea that speaks to our moment as powerfully as movement? In an era that counts mass migration and the right to refuge among its greatest human-rights issues, asking questions about which kind of bodies are allowed to move through the world feels more urgent than ever.
SUPERPOSITION: Equilibrium & Engagement, the first-ever Biennale of Sydney curated by Mami Kataoka, the chief curator at Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum, presents 70 Australian and international artists who are searching for these answers in their work. At Artspace, Ai Weiwei will install Crystal Ball, a work that addresses the future of the global humanitarian crisis; Tanya Goel, an Indian artist who creates paintings out of the rubble of construction sites, will exhibit frescos that riff on the changing nature of cities while Belgium’s Michaël Borremans, a contemporary of Luc Tuymans and Gerhard Richter, will show a suite of new video works and drawings.
Elsewhere, the Art Gallery of New South Wales will show Wathaurung elder Aunty Marlene Gilson alongside Sydney Ball and Roy De Maistre, and the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art will present a participatory work courtesy of Japanese
theatre director Akira Takayama. As always, Cockatoo Island will serve as a canvas for ambitious site-specific installations. This year’s highlights?
A three-dimensional mountain range conceived by Scottish artist Anya Gallaccio; a commission spun out of personal artefacts by Ryan Gander; and Bring the Silence (2018), an audiovisual installation that meditates on Sufi burial rites by the Lebanese-born Sydney artist Khaled Sabsabi.
launches with a keynote discussion at the Opera House between Kataoka and Ai Weiwei.
