Rivers, wetlands and all kinds of salt and freshwater ecosystems will be in focus at the 23rd Biennale of Sydney, running from 12 March to 13 June 2022, its curators have announced.
Titled Rivus, Latin for river or stream, the biennale will bring together artists, designers, architects, scientists, and communities to ask questions such as: “Can a river sue us over psychoactive sewage? Will oysters grow teeth in aquatic revenge? What do the eels think?”
The biennale is curated by artistic director José Roca, who heads the Flora Ars and Natura arts organization in Bogotá, together with Paschal Daantos Berry (Art Gallery of New South Wales), Anna Davis, (Museum of Contemporary Art Australia), Hannah Donnelly (Information and Cultural Exchange), and Talia Linz (Artspace).
In their curatorial statement, they explain, “The 23rd Biennale of Sydney is articulated around a series of conceptual wetlands situated along waterways of the Gadigal, Barramattagal and Cabrogal peoples.
“These imagined ecosystems are populated by artworks, experiments, activisms and research, which together follow the currents of meandering tributaries, expanding out into a delta of interrelated ideas including river horror, creek futurism, Indigenous science, cultural flows, ancestral technologies, counter-mapping, queer ecologies, multispecies justice, hydrofeminism, water healing, spirit streams, fish philosophy and sustainable methods of co-existence.”
The curatorial group. From left, Barbara Moore, Biennale of Sydney; Anna Davis, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia; Paschal Daantos Berry, Art Gallery of New South Wales; Talia Linz, Artspace; Hannah Donnelly, Information + Cultural Exchange (I.C.E.); José Roca, artistic director, 23rd Biennale of Sydney.
Image: Joshua Morris
The program features more than 330 artworks by 89 participants, as well as 400 events.
Highlights will include: Flow, a 600-square-metre bamboo work inspired by the flow of a river by artists, architect and designer studio Cave Urban; Living Seawalls, a collaboration between marine ecologists from UNSW and Macquarie University and industrial designer Alex Goad of Reef Design Lab aimed at bringing marine life back to the most urbanized places in the world; and a gigantic grass portrait of Gadigal Elder Uncle Charles Madden and his granddaughter, environmental activist Lille Madden by English duo Ackroyd and Harvey.
The New Landscapes Institute will also take part, “bringing together artists, architects, researchers and designers to collaborate on ideas around floating architecture, archives and the unbuilt, animal-human communication, marine science and strange oceanic phenomena.”
See the full program here.
