The Fifth Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art will be held from 19 September–20 October 2013 at Manege in Moscow. The artistic director Catherine de Zegher shares her plans for the edition.
Alia Syed, Panopticon Letters: Missive I (still), 2010‐2013. Single-channel HD digital video, sound, 22:46 min. Courtesy the artist and Talwar, New York
Lucy Rees: What do you have planned for this year’s Moscow Biennale? Can you tell us about your curatorial framework?
CdZ: I believe we have to get away from the conventional thematic approach of biennials and let the currency of ideas materialize by working together with artists — how they think and act in an increasingly interdependent world. I want to be innovative! The title is “Bolshe Sveta / More Light” and will promote enlightened conversation and action at the crossroads where different concepts of space and time — and consequent structures of thought and sensibility — are elaborated. With world time increasingly ticking in a homogeneous manner to the rhythm of neoliberal capitalism, space is obliterated by time. The artists point out an urgent need to enact another kind of movement in the world. By entering slow time and slow attention, there is an increased receptiveness to sensation and movement — an unfolding that profoundly belongs to art and aesthetics. Together with audiences, these artists engage in continuities between past, present and future, through a focus on daily routines and habits, in a time that is of the present, sometimes intimate and domestic, and that is related to our environment. When time is activated in this way, what emerges is a space-time as “here and now” that addresses socio-political issues in the present and introduces new necessary thought patterns through manifold art practices.
Aslan Gaisumov, Untitled, 2013 From the series ‘Untitled (War)’. Mixed media, variable dimensions. Courtesy the artist.
LR: Your strong background in drawing (you’ve held positions as guest curator in the Department of Drawings at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and as chief curator of The Drawing Center in New York) has been talked about in relation to this biennial, as well as its potential resonance within Moscow, where recent art history is weighted towards graphics and illustration. Can you speak to that?
CdZ: I don’t think of exhibitions in separate mediums, but as a whole. This does not diminish my interest in drawing, which will definitely be present.
Micro-art-group «Gorod “City” Ustinov» Genesis Era (detail), 2013. Mixed media, variable dimensions. Courtesy the artists.
Micro-art-group «Gorod “City” Ustinov» Islands (detail), 2012. Mixed media, variable dimensions. Courtesy the artists
LR: Tell me about the contemporary art scene in Moscow. Are you intending to include many Russian artists?
Cdz: As I have always done, I will work with artists from around the globe, with a focus on artists from and around Russia — both older and younger generations. I find the art scene in Russia very interesting and vibrant. There is a wonderful younger generation who are investigating art and society in very thoughtful and innovative ways. I always work in an empathic way within the context of a specific place and time.
Gosia Wlodarczak, Window Shopping Frost Drawing, 2012. 18-day performance, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia. Courtesy the artist and Fehily Contemporary, Melbourne
Jumaadi, A Man Carrying a House (Fragment from the shadow play ‘The Woman Who Married the Mountain’), 2012-13. Paper cut-out, variable dimensions. Courtesy the artist.
Maya Onoda, Kaleidoscope (detail), 2012. Magnan Metz Gallery, New York. Courtesy the artist and Magnan Metz, New York.
Rena Effendi, Brothers playing in the unlit hallway of an unfinished emergency hospital building – a refugee settlement since 1993. Baku, Azerbaijan, 2010. Courtesy the artist and Grinberg Agency, Moscow.
This interview appeared in Flash Art International Summer Edition (July, August, September 2013).
