calendario eventi  :: 

X

19/12/2008

Cairo Biennale

Different Venues, Cairo

Since its inception in 1984, the Cairo Biennale is considered one of the most important cultural events in the Middle East.
Conceived and initially designed to explore contemporary art in the Arab world, the concepts of the successive artistic directors expanded the interest to the global international arena. The biennale is produced by the fine arts sector of the Egyptian ministry of culture, and the exhibition is spread over the entirety of all public spaces managed by the sector. The success in sustaining the event had in a direct impact on the contemporary art practices arising from Egypt as well as from the Middle East region in the past two decades.

The other..

The other is no other but myself. A motto that is declared and manifested every day in world politics, military strife, clash of civilizations, conflicting ideologies, numerous ethnicities and beliefs. The Cairo Biennale, aware of such juxtapositions, will probe what we perceive today as the other; we are inviting creators / artists to explore the realms of the other within and without.
Contemporary art practices today assimilate native and universal culture, as well as local specificities of history, heritage and legacy, and produce artworks representative of the artist in her / his social milieu; the art production is an authentic documentation of apace and time.

Common belief with or without evidence raises doubts about, the other: the other tries sometimes to undermine the other's culture, heritage and / or history. Human wealth is in our diversity; The Cairo Biennale, in its eleventh edition encourages artists to foster diversity and tolerance. We believe that the other dialogues, bridges and interacts with diversified cultures and civilizations. New horizons will eventually uncover through such dialogue; results may not be as important as the process; dialogue and interaction with the other are the paramount objectives. Newer perspectives will enrich others who will follow, and new foundations for such interactivity will be established through this research.In our quest to attain such a dialogue, artists will reflect upon their own practices and praxis, as well as of other artists from the four corners of the globe.

The other becomes then both the self and the surrounding others. Our other can also be seen as a subtraction of a local culture, with all its specificities, from the universal culture that contains numerous cultures in cumulative patterns. Utopia versus sophisticated social dynamics, belief versus suspicion and reality versus fiction all will contribute, in art practices, to reveal both in theory and practice what our invited artists perceive as the ( other ). Dialogue leads to better perception of the other, and eventually a better reality.

Image: Jennifer Steinkamp

Ihab el-Labban
The Biennale's Commissaire-General

Main venues:
Arts Palace
Museum of the Modern Egyptian Art
The Small theatre in Opera

stampa

permanent link