The 16th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art: Manifesto of Fragility

Hermes and Dionysus, 19th century plaster cast. 212 x 100 x 66 cm.
Courtesy Musée des Moulages – Université Lumière Lyon 2, France

The 16th Lyon Biennale
Manifesto of Fragility
September 14, 2022 – December 31, 2022
https://www.labiennaledelyon.com

Professional preview days
September 12, 2022
September 13, 2022

The Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art is pleased to announce its 16th edition, set to open to the public on Wednesday, September 14, 2022. Conceived by curators Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath as a Manifesto of Fragility, the Biennale positions fragility at the heart of a generative form of resistance that is emboldened by the past, responsive to the present, and primed for the future. It will unfold through a sequence of happenings before and after the Biennale’s duration that will assume various forms through institutional partnerships in several cities across the globe.

Taking its cue from the vestiges of Lyon’s complex histories, the Biennale invokes an assembly of tales of fragility and resistance, both told and untold, as a conduit towards an expansive response to several pressing questions in an increasingly tormented world. Lyon is more than a city. It is a tale of many cities that is deeply etched in the collective imaginary of those who come to know it. From the glorious Roman settlement of Lugdunum, and the brothers Lumière who gave the world its silver screens, to the embattled Napoleon uttering his declaration of love “People of Lyon, I love you” and the obscure Louise Brunet on her perilous Beirut-bound journey to work in the silk factories of Mount Lebanon, the destiny of Lyon, and many of those who come to know it, is marked by the originalities and oddities of its people, and the sudden transformations in their fate. This is the backdrop against which the 16^th Lyon Biennale is set.

FRAGILITY

Our fragility is perhaps one of few universally felt truths in our divided world. Nowhere is this more apparent than on and within the body. Racialized, gendered, colonized, or depleted, the body is the first of many thresholds where conflict rages and resolves, illness festers and abates, and life in all of its complexity, at least in some sense, begins and ends. Communities are equally fragile, most apparently at the fault lines that separate the haves from the have-nots. Increasing civil unrest sparked by refusals to bow down to age-old injustices and endemic inequities has enhanced a sense of societal frenzy. Whether in the bruised body of a protestor, or the ashen skies over the earth’s inflamed surface, our awareness of our shared precariousness has rarely been more tangible or visible. Fragility is inevitable.

RESISTANCE

The 16th Lyon Biennale assembles a host of creative practices and objects that embody the fragile and fleeting nature of our existence. They variously speak to the vulnerabilities of people and places, bare their scars and deformities, share witness accounts of turmoil, or simply draw attention to the indelible traces of time. What would become of our world if instead of shunning vulnerability as a mark of weakness, we were to harness it as a foundation for empowerment? In this revised script true power moves not to conquer new frontiers but rather to continue on a march towards a home that is carried within. The Biennale presents a collective statement buttressed by a plurality of resilient voices thriving on tenderness and flourishing in adversity. A community upholding fragility forms where word, image, sound, and movement come together, culminating in the drafting of a Manifesto of Fragility for a collective future.

TIME

The 16th Lyon Biennale recognizes that artists past and present are often among some of the most vulnerable voices in our societies. This vulnerability is paralleled in the objects and works of art they create. Museums and libraries are temples to these perishable testimonies that we bequeath to future generations, hoping that their legacies outlast our own mortality. By the same token, novelty enchants us, so much so, that we risk losing our appreciation for the contemporaneity of all art. In addressing these contradictory impulses, the 16th Lyon Biennale brings together works of art and objects spanning several millennia and disparate geographies that impart timeless accounts of vulnerability and perseverance. Drawing from the rich collections of institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts Lyon, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, just to name a few, the Lyon Biennale aims to initiate a revised reading of diverse works and the narratives they embody.

Eternally cyclical, history, with all of its animate and inanimate tenants, has endured innumerable episodes of self-reckoning. Our fragility repeatedly rises to the fore, stares us in the face, emboldens us, and then seemingly disappears. It lingers underneath time’s thick skin, dormant but not gone, silent yet never silenced.