Initiated by artgenève and organized in collaboration with the MAMCO and the City of Geneva, the third edition of the Geneva Biennale Sculpture Garden will open on Thursday, June 9, 2022. The exhibition aims to establish itself as a major Swiss Biennale for contemporary art, offering Geneva and its many visitors a cultural event of high quality and accessible to all. The Biennale, which runs throughout the summer and until September 30, forms a path punctuated by numerous artistic
projects from the Parc des Eaux-Vives to the Parc La Grange, and the Eaux-Vives beach. The 2022 exhibition is curated by Devrim Bayar, curator at WIELS contemporary art center in Brussels, who has gathered 26 works, more than half of which are produced for this exhibition. For its third edition, the Geneva Biennale Sculpture Garden focuses on contemporary artists who question our relationships to others and to ourselves in an increasingly unstable environment in which technologies shape our subjectivities.
For the past two years, the pandemic has profoundly affected our way of life, disintegrating our physical contacts to give place to dizzying virtual relationships. Although it has separated us, the virus, inoculating one person after another, has paradoxically proven that we are a globally connected community. Today, a war on the borders of Europe tragically reminds us of the interdependence of our societies, whose economic, political, and military dealings directly impact our daily lives.
Against this backdrop of perpetual crisis, large movements for greater social and environmental justice are nevertheless succeeding in mobilizing individuals on a global scale and in promoting alternative ways of living together. These challenges to the dominant discourse and the resulting reconfigurations of our social fabric are major issues in contemporary culture, in which digital technology has taken a prominent role.
The Parc La Grange, Parc des Eaux-Vives and its nearby beach offer privileged spaces to meet and exchange; from reunions with family and friends to sports out-ings or romantic dates, from reconnecting with nature or with oneself to parties or school excursions. Beyond their recreational character, these spaces are above all shared spaces, where not only affinities but also disparities and divergences are
articulated. The artists invited to exhibit in these specific settings investigate the tensions inherent to the public space but also their potential for emancipation. The variety of their proposals–which go beyond the strict domain of sculpture to invest those of design, architecture, video, photography, writing, and more–testifies to
the way in which art constantly reinvents itself in light of contemporary challenges.