For the 12th Biennale de Lyon, curator Gunnar B. Kvaran has invited artists from all over the world who work in the narrative field and use art to experiment with the modalities and mechanisms of storytelling. The exhibition gives pride of place to the ingenuity and inventiveness of contemporary artists in undoing mainstream narrative codes and off-the-peg plotting devices in order to tell new stories differently.
The art of these artist-storytellers comes in many and varied forms and uses a wealth of different registers, materials and techniques. It highlights the way (or rather, ways) in which young artists of today—according to whether they work in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa or North America—are imagining the narratives of tomorrow: narratives that do without the suspense and excitement of globalized fiction as practiced in Hollywood, on television, or in the best-sellers of world literature. Theirs are totally new narratives that defamiliarise us with the world and restore the deep-rooted strangeness and complexity that classic storytelling devices have always sought to iron out or to stifle. These are art narratives that enable us to see and understand the world in a new light and more intelligibly.
Performance weekend
Saturday 19 & Sunday 20 October
With Xavier Cha, Mette Edvardsen, Rana Hamadeh, Louise Hervé& Chloé Maillet, Alice Lescanne & Sonia Derzypolski, Georgia Sagri, Helga Wretman, Paulo Nazareth and Donna Kukama, together with interviews and discussions orchestrated by art critic Jean-Max Colard
Symposium: “The world is made of stories”
Friday 22 November
How contemporary artists formalize visual narratives, with artists Antoine Catala & Fabrice Hyber, Mieke Bal, Marie Fraser, Olivier Asselin, Normand Biron, Mauro Carbone, Bertrand Gervais, Benoit Peeters, Cyrille Bret & Christine Ross.
Video weekend
Saturday 30 November & Sunday 1 December
With Alain Robbe-Grillet, Matthew Barney, Patricia Lennox-Boyd, Petra Cortright, Laure Prouvost, Neïl Beloufa, Laida Lertxundi, Helen Marten, Gustavo Speridiao, Ryan Trecartin… and special screenings, presented by Fabrice Bousteau
Robotics weekend / Interactive narratives
Saturday 14 & Sunday 15 December
The 12th Biennale de Lyon artists:
Jonathas de Andrade, Ed Atkins, Trisha Baga, Matthew Barney, Neil Beloufa, Gerry Bibby, Juliette Bonneviot, Dineo Seshee Bopape, The Bruce High Quality Foundation, Antoine Catala, Xavier Cha, Paul Chan, Ian Cheng, Dan Colen, Petra Cortright, Jason Dodge, Aleksandra Domanovic, David Douard, Mette Edvardsen, Erro, Roe Ethridge, Ed Fornieles, Gabriela Fridriksdottir, Robert Gober, Karl Haendel, Rana Hamadeh, Louise Hervé & Chloé Maillet, Fabrice Hyber, Glenn Kaino, John Kelsey, Jeff Koons, Donna Kukama, Margaret Lee & Michele Abeles, Patricia Lennox-Boyd, Laida Lertxundi, Alice Lescanne & Sonia Derzypolski, Ann Lislegaard, Nate Lowman, MadeIn Company/Xu Zhen, Vaclav Magid, Helen Marten, Thiago Martins De Melo, Bjarne Melgaard, Takao Minami, Meleko Mokgosi, Paulo Nazareth, Paulo Nimer Pjota, Yoko Ono, Aude Pariset, Laure Prouvost, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, James Richards, Tabor Robak, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Matthew Ronay, Tom Sachs, Georgia Sagri, Hiraki Sawa, Mary Sibande, Alexandre Singh, Sumakshi Singh, Gustavo Speridiao, Tavares Strachan, Nobuaki Takekawa, Ryan Trecartin & Lizzie Fitch, Peter Wachtler, Hannah Weinberger, Ming Wong, Yang Fudong, Yang Zhen Zhong, Anicka Yi, Zhang Ding
The 12th Biennale de Lyon venues:
La Sucrière, Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art, Bullukian Foundation, Chaufferie de l’Antiquaille & Saint-Just Church