IBA Stage: 36th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts – Chus Martinez

36th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts Curator Chus Martinez. Photo by Christoph Bühler.

IBA Stage: Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts
August 5, 2025 (Tuesday)
11:00 am (Ljubljana/GMT+2)
https://36.bienale.si/en/

As we approach the upcoming IBA Stage event dedicated to the 36th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts, we’re introducing each of our guests that will animate the conversation. Today, we begin with Chus Martínez, the curator of “The Oracle.”

Born in Spain, Chus Martínez is a curator, writer, and academic with a background in philosophy and art history. She currently heads the Institute Art Gender Nature at the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW in Switzerland, and serves as Associate Curator at TBA21 (Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary) in Madrid and Venice. In addition, she is a board member of CIMAM and sits on the advisory boards of several prominent institutions including the Castello di Rivoli in Turin and the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin.

Martínez’s career spans several influential roles in the field of contemporary art, including Chief Curator at El Museo del Barrio in New York, Head of Department at dOCUMENTA (13), Chief Curator at MACBA in Barcelona, and Director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein.

Her curatorial and intellectual work reflects a long-standing commitment to experimental and speculative approaches to exhibition-making, often shaped through close collaboration with artists. In addition she regularly writes for international journals and contributes to catalogues and artist books. Among her most recent publications are:
The Complex Answer. On Art as a Non-Binary Intelligence (2023),
Like This. Natural Intelligence As Seen by Art (2022),
Coding Care (co-edited with Sabine Himmelsbach, 2022),
Corona Tales. Let Life Happen to You (2021), and
The Wild Book of Inventions (2020).

Recent exhibitions include Search for Life by Stephanie Comilang (TBA21 at the Thyssen Museum, Madrid, 2024), Doblad mis Amores (Collegium, 2023), Living in Joy (Art Sonje, 2023), Clear, Lucid and Awake (Art Sonje, 2024), and Mathilde Rosier (Fondation Pernod Ricard, 2023).

For the 36th Ljubljana Biennale, Martínez brings forward a project that embraces art as a space for transformation, speculation, and care. As the curatorial text states:

“The Oracle is not a theme, it is a figure, a being, an ancient technology for the dissemination of visions and doubts, of dreams and intuitions. This biennale seeks to create a moment for feeling the cosmic condition of being in the world, and for embracing a culture of caring as a necessity, not a trend.”

Stay tuned for more news from us on this upcoming IBA Stage event and keep following communications on the 36th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts.

To have the possibility to hear and discuss with the individuals behind biennials has been a key component of what we believe IBA can offer to our members and the wider public and we value your participation through our live streams. As always IBA Stage events are meant as a moment to hear about a project through its makers and have the opportunity to participate in a Q&A session at the end of the presentation.

Register here for the event!