Seminar: Art Biennials: Where do we go from here?

Biennials are among the most important phenomena in the art world. As comprehensive international exhibitions, they influence the global networks and careers of artists and curators and set current discourses and trends that influence the art market. Especially in the last two decades, new biennials have emerged exponentially worldwide. However, social, political, ecological, and economic aspects connected to these biennials have caused controversy and are raising questions about their meaningfulness and raison d’être. Debates about this topic have intensified since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been a significant setback to global biennial art tourism and brought the local potential of these formats into focus.

The seminar Art Biennials: Where do we go from here?, led by Yvette Mutumba and Julia Grosse, is a cooperation between the Berlin Biennale’s education and mediation department and students of the Masters Art in Context at the Berlin University of the Arts. In this theory-practice seminar, student groups propose contributions to the “Messy Glossary” of the 12th Berlin Biennale and design and conduct a free educational tour.

Participants:
Anand Angarag, Astrid Schütter, Chao Chen, Dachil Sado دخيل علي, Elina Saalfeld, Forough Absalan, Felix Classen, Gloria Jurado, İpek Çınar, Jana Smetanina, Jeanne Schmidt, Judith Greitemann, Joanna Garmon, Laura Hagemann, Lucía Alfaro Valencia, Luïza Luz, Min Kyung Kim, Nina Berfelde, Özcan Ertek, Rami Shalati

Yvette Mutumba is the co-founder and artistic director of Contemporary And (C&). She has been curator-at-large at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam since 2020. She was part of the curatorial team of the 10th Berlin Biennale (2018) and a visiting professor for Global Discourses at the Kunsthochschule für Medien (KHM), Cologne (2017–2018).

Julia Grosse is the co-founder and artistic director of Contemporary And (C&) and an associate curator at Gropius Bau in Berlin. She studied art history, German language and literature, and media studies at Ruhr University in Bochum. She worked as a columnist and cultural journalist in London for the Tageszeitung (taz), Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, AD Magazine, SZ Magazin, and Süddeutsche Zeitung.