Montevideo is the first city in the world chosen by the International Biennial of Contemporary Art of South America (BIENALSUR), followed by Madrid and Paris, to present the program of its 2019 edition that will be held simultaneously in more than 20 countries, from June to October, with the participation of important international artists.
Next February 11, at 6 p.m., the National Museum of Visual Arts of Montevideo will host a meeting open to the public in which the details of BIENALSUR 2019 will be announced. In its previous edition, the biennial took place in more than 16 countries and 32 cities, bringing together more than 400 artists in 84 venues and public spaces intervened for 120 continuous days.
The Uruguayan meeting will be attended by Aníbal Jozami and Diana Wechsler, general director and artistic-academic director of BIENALSUR; Enrique Aguerre, director of the National Museum of Visual Arts of Montevideo; Gloria Cortés Aliaga, art historian, researcher and curator at the National Museum of Fine Arts of Chile; Fernando Miranda, Director of the National School of Fine Arts Institute of Uruguay; and Sebastián Alonso, professor at the National School of Fine Arts of Uruguay, in coordination. In this first meeting of the year, the curatorial lines that take with special force the issues of gender, transits and migrations, ways of seeing, memories and forgetfulness, art and nature, among others, will be presented.
In the second edition of BIENALSUR, Uruguay will host several international exhibitions. Undoubtedly, one of the most interesting and linked to gender issues as a curatorial line will be the one curated by Spanish Marta Gili, former director of the Jeu de Paume in Paris, which will bring together artists such as American Maya Deren, Cuban Ana Mendieta, Italian Lisetta Carmi and French Sophie Ristelhueber.
Among the Uruguayan institutions that are expected to host BIENALSUR are the National Museum of Visual Arts, the Cultural Center of Spain, the EAC Contemporary Center and the Faculty of Arts of the University of the Republic, among others.
BIENALSUR is a unique proposal of its kind, with a free thematic call that avoids the traditional format and involves a network of museums, cultural centers, universities and important artists, critics and theoreticians in all continents, becoming the most powerful contemporary art event that creates from the south a new art circuit, widely recognized by the public and the international press.
The call for projects from artists and curators who wanted to be part of BIENALSUR 2019 closed in July 2018. More than five thousand proposals from 76 countries were registered in what was a totally free call, without a pre-established theme, and with the selection in charge of an International Curatorial Council made up of prestigious professionals from different backgrounds.