The 7th Athens Biennale Welcomes the Year of ECLIPSE

sonicECLIPSE. Image courtesy of Athens Biennale.

7th Athens Biennale
ECLIPSE
Spring 2021
https://athensbiennale.org/en

In 2020, the light dimmed and the world lost its balance – the era of ECLIPSE began, misty and ominous. Now that 2021 promises change, the future calls us to re-imagine ways of getting together and co-existing through a different lens.

In welcoming the new year, the 7th Athens Biennale reveals the worlds of ECLIPSE, capturing omens and revealing visions for the future, inside and beyond the present.

ECLIPSE Almanac
Curators and artists foreshadow AB7: ECLIPSE through texts, videos, images and sounds that spotlight a multitude of references, artistic practices, perceptions and experiences, leading us to the opening of the exhibition. In the Almanac you can find a guide to a world in motion.

“The fight for a better world is a continuous one”
In the last new moon of the past year, Larry Ossei-Mensah wrote the first page of the Almanac with reference to the violent resistance of the Nigerian government towards the End SARS (Special Anti-Robbery Squad) movement, as well as how these events remind him of what happened in Minneapolis in Summer 2020. Through his letter 2020: A Year of Reckoning, the Ghanian-American co-curator of AB7: ECLIPSE reflects on the collective and personal rearrangements of the past months and sees the future as a beacon of hope and faith in the dynamics the collective brings.

“The love we are talking about is plural and collective”
In the first new moon of 2021, the co-curators of AB7: ECLIPSE Omsk Social Club break the chains of the past with the video Perception as Participation; an audiovisual spell for sharing the experience of “right here, right now”. With a love born in antithesis and growing beyond exclusivity, the Berlin-based art collective motivates our participation in the present – the definitive moment of reality’s destabilisation in order for us to not fade away into horrific pasts of apocalyptic futures.

sonicECLIPSE
The sound of ECLIPSE is still reflected in the light of the full moon. Ashes (Ayshel/Waiting Room), tidal forces (Devika) and dead birds (ΜΜΜΔ) composed the dark and eerie soundscapes of the past months. In the first full moon of 2021, sonicECLIPSE will resonate broken electronics for the mind, body and soul with its seventh mixtape curated by Noff Weezy.

In the era of ECLIPSE, when representations of the past and oracles for the future constantly transform our perception of reality, the 7^th Athens Biennale invites us to sync with the social, political and cultural dynamics of the new year, moving towards the light.

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