
The forthcoming edition of the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art reacts against the current state of permanent crisis, combining positions which embody and celebrate plural narratives for tomorrow. It circumvents dominant paradigms which sustain the status quo and pre-empt possible futures, to make sense of our current times as moments of transformation filled with potentiality.
Drawing from the imaginative energy of non-normative agencies, it eludes speculative attitudes to futurity to look at existing possibilities of being together. It embraces an expanded notion of queer to challenge dominant paradigms, inviting an integrated rethinking and remaking of bodies, spaces, and times.
Thought as a series of communal situations of awe and estrangement, it examines the now, disseminating narratives that celebrate our collective ability to imagine and rehearse worlds to come.
Curatorial framework by João Laia
Sophia Al-Maria / Adam Christensen / Joana da Conceição / Niko Hallikainen / Rodrigo Hernández / Maria Jerez / Agnė Jokšė / Kem / Tarik Kiswanson / Yarema Malaschuk & Roman Khimei / Esse McChesney / Sandra Mujinga / Rasmus Myrup / Ania Nowak / Outi Pieski / Luiz Roque / Prem Sahib / P. Staff / Iris Touliatou /
Ana Vaz / Osías Yanov / Yong Xiang Li med flera.
Röda Sten Konsthall, Göteborgs Konsthall, Hammarkullen Konsthall, Stadsbiblioteket Göteborg.
Press preview Registration for the press preview is open here.
Registration for the professional preview of exhibitions will open at the beginning of August.
João Laia is the Chief Curator for exhibitions at Kiasma – Museum of ContemporaryArt, Helsinki. He has a background in social sciences, film theory and contemporary art. Past projects were developed in collaboration with Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Galeria Municipal do Porto; La Casa Encendida, Madrid; MAAT – Museum for Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon; Moscow Young Art Biennial, MMOMA; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Videobrasil / SESC Pompeia, São Paulo.
He edited Living Encounters (Kiasma/Mousse, 2022) and A Multiple Community (SESC, 2018) and has been published in magazines such as Art Monthly, Flash Art, frieze, Mousse, Spike and Terremoto. Together with Valentinas Klimašauskas, Laia curated the 14th Baltic Triennial (2021) titled The Endless Frontier at the CAC – Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius.
Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA) is a contemporary art project taking place every two years in Gothenburg, Sweden. Started in 2001, GIBCA has established itself as one of Sweden’s biggest art events and is internationally seen as an investigative and site-dedicated biennial.
To each of its editions, GIBCA invites one or several internationally practicing curators to enter in a dialogue with the city of Gothenburg, its citizens, people interested in art and artists around the globe. Starting from a theme and presenting stark artistic practices, the visitors as well as the art world are offered an experience of art at its best.
Each biennial consists of several major exhibitions and programme at established art institutions in Gothenburg, at forums for different questions and voices in the city, as well as in the public realm. The biennial fosters interdisciplinary dialogue and often partners organizations active in other fields, that become advisers, hosts and often co-producers of the artworks on view.
2001: Ewa Brodin, Britt Ignell and Lasse Lindqvist: Experience – Dissolution
2003: Carl Michael von Hausswolf: Against All Evens
2005: Sara Arrhenius: more!than this – Negotiating Realities
2007: Edi Muka and Joa Ljungberg: Rethinking Dissent
2009: Celia Prado and Johan Pousette: What a Wonderful World
2011: Sarat Maharaj, Dorethee Albrecht, Stina Edblom, Gertrud Sandqvist: Pandemonium – Art in a Time of Creativity Fever
2013: Katerina Gregos, Andjeas Ejiksson, Ragnar Kjartansson, Claire Tancons, Joanna Warsza: Play! Recapturing the Radical Imagination
2015: Elvira Dyangani Ose: A Story within a Story…
2017: Nav Haq: WheredoIendandyoubegin – On Secularity
2019: Lisa Rosendahl, Part of the Labyrinth
2021: Lisa Rosendahl, The Ghost Ship and the Sea Change
The biennial is initiated by Gothenburg City Cultural Committee, and since 2006 the organizer for GIBCA is Röda Sten Konsthall.