4th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art

G.Postnikov|Geometria.ru. Image courtesy Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art.

Founder: the National Centre for Contemporary Art, the National Center for Museums and Exhibitions ROSIZO
Supported by:  the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation
Co-founders: Administration of the Governor of Sverdlovsk Region, the Government of the Sverdlovsk Region, Yekaterinburg City Administration, Center for the Support of Development of Contemporary Art “ZA ART”
Organizer: Ural Branch of the National Centre for Contemporary Art as part of ROSIZO

Biennial Commissioner: Alisa Prudnikova (Yekaterinburg-Moscow)
Biennial Location: Yekaterinburg and Ural region cities

Biennial Dates: 14 September 2017 – 12 November 2017 (professional preview 12 and 13 September)

Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art is one of the largest international projects in contemporary art in the region. It has been organized and conducted every 2 years since 2010 by the National Centre of Contemporary Arts (NCCA) in Yekaterinburg and the Ural region.

In 2017, the 4th Ural Industrial Biennial will be held September 14 to November 12 in Yekaterinburg and the cities of the Ural region.

Industrial peculiarity of the Urals was reflected powerfully in culture. For the time of the Biennial many symbols of industrialization era that left its mark on the city look – production sites, large factories and businesses facilities – are turned into exhibition halls and stages for theatric actions and performances. It’s not the first time when the unique constructivism architecture sites are actively used by the Biennial as major art spaces. In general, the project has no analogues in the world therefore the industrial Biennial has become an art brand of the Ural region.

The key theme of the 4th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art is “The New Literacy” which is devoted to work and leisure activities in the near future. It anticipates the changes that will soon happen in the social, economic and cultural areas.

In order to select a curator for the main project of the 4th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art the Expert Committee was formed this year.
It consists of:

Sally Tallant – Director of Liverpool Biennial;
Bige Orer – Director of the Istanbul Biennial;
Joel Slayton – Executive Director of ZERO1 Biennial (2006, 2008, 2010);
Yara Bubnova – an independent curator, director of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Sofia, Assistant Director of the National Gallery in Sofia (Sofia, Bulgaria), curator of the main project of the 2nd Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art;
Biljana Ciric – an independent curator and co-curator of the main project of the 3rd Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art;
Li Zhenhua – an independent curator and co-curator of the main project of the 3rd Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art;
Christina Steinbrecher – director of Viennacontemporary;
Dmitry Bulatov – curator of the Baltic branch of the National Centre of Contemporary Arts (NCCA-ROSIZO).

As a result the Expert Committee came up with a short list consisting of two out of 12 submitted candidates for the curators of the Biennial Main Project. The final stage of selecting the curator of the Main Project of the 4th Ural Industrial Biennial was made by Sergey Perov, CEO of ROSIZO, in cooperation with Alisa Prudnikova, the Biennial Commissioner.

Joao Ribas became the curator coming up with the following concept: “The image as witness / Capitalism choreographies / The persistent word.”
Joao Ribas is Deputy Director and Senior Curator of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto, Portugal. Previously, he worked as List Visual Arts Center curator at MIT (2009-2013) and Drawing Center in New York (2007-2009).
Among his recent projects are group exhibitions “Under the Clouds: From Paranoia to the Digital Sublime”, Serralves Museum (2015), “In the Holocene”, MIT List Visual Arts Center (2012), “Kabul, Tehran, Jenin…”, MIT List Visual Arts Center (2010 ), FAX, the Drawing Center (2009) and the exhibition of works by Michael Krebber, Helena Almeida, The Otolith Group, Chris Marker, Amalia Pica, Joachim Koester, Akram Zaatari, Otto Piene, Frances Stark, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Ree Morton, among others.

Joao  Ribas is the winner of four consecutive AICA Exhibition Awards (2008–11) and of an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award (2010). His writing has been featured in numerous catalogs and publications such as Artforum, Mousse, Afterall, The Exhibitionist, Artnews, Frieze and ArtReview. His recent publication, In the Holocene, is published by Sternberg Press (2015).  He is also often invited to give lectures in art institutions and organizations around the world. He was teaching at Yale University, School of Visual Arts (New York) and in the School of Design of Rhode Island (RISD).

This year the Expert Committee was formed as well for the parallel program of the 4th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art. It consists of:

Maria Bukova – director of Krasnoyarsk Museum Center, Krasnoyarsk;
Andrey Vasilenko – curator, the Arseniev museum, Vladivostok;
Tamara Galyeeva – Ph.D. in History of Arts, Head of Department of History of Arts, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, Ural Federal University named after Boris Yeltsin, Yekaterinburg;
Yekaterina Inozemtseva – curator of the “Garage” Museum of Modern Art, Moscow;
Tatyana Kruglova – Ph.D., professor of department of ethics, aesthetics, theory and history of culture at the Ural Federal University named after Boris Yeltsin, Yekaterinburg;
Alisa Prudnikova – Director of the Ural branch of the NCCA as part of ROSIZO, commissioner of the Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Yekaterinburg / Moscow;
Alisa Savitskaya – curator, head of the Volgovyatsky NCCA exhibition department, Nizhny Novgorod;
Marina Sokolovskaya – curator, Yeltsin Center Museum, Yekaterinburg;
Olesya Turkina – art critic, curator of the Contemporary Art Department of the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg;
Svetlana Usoltseva – curator of the Ural branch of the NCCA, Yekaterinburg.

By the end of January, the members of the Expert Committee will select the participants of the parallel program out of submitted applications.

In order to support the Ural artists, Ural Branch of NCCA in cooperation with the “Sinara” charitable foundation initiated a grant program. The main mission of this program is to help the development of local artistic practices, to develop international dialogue, to help the Ural artists participate in the Biennial’s  Main project.

The venue of the Main project will be announced on February 2017.

NEW STRUCTURE

The Main project is an exhibition in Yekaterinburg, prepared by an international curator and reflecting the key theme of the Biennial.

Artist-in-Residence Program is a a tour exhibition by the industrial spaces of the Ural region with paying visits to the public spaces, where art objects will be exhibited.

Biennial Intellectual Platform is the program of meetings, seminars, workshops, laboratories for professionals, students and the general public, including children and young people with scientific and educational purposes.

Biennial Performance platform is a series of performances created specifically for the Biennial for staging including staging in the factory shops.

Special projects are located in various not exhibited spaces and are connected with the key theme of the Biennial and industrial themes too.
The “University Biennial” educational program is divided into three internal categories, among which there are:

• a series of lectures, discussions, film screenings, guided tours;
• kids program
• art mediation program established for theoretical and practical preparation of young specialists (art historians, theoreticians of art, culturologists , philosophers, aesthetics specialists, sociologists of art), who will work as art mediators with Biennial visitors during the event.