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The Geopolitics of the 15th Lyon Biennale

PARIS, Sept. 17, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Some fifty artists have been commissioned this year to produce in situ artworks at the former Fagor factories in Lyon. It's the first time the Lyon Biennale will make use of the 29,000m² site located not far from the highly symbolic spot where the Saône flows into the Rhone. Entitled "Where Water Comes Together with Other Water", from a poem by the American writer Raymond Carver, the theme of mixity has clearly been singled out as the dominant focus of this 2019 edition and the whole thing has been put together by the young team of curators from the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

The Lyon Biennale is seeking to establish itself as a major event in the international Contemporary Art calendar and is supported by a substantial budget; but its primary responsibility is to highlight French culture and promote France's power and influence. The result is of course a delicate balance that has to be re-imagined every two years... a challenge for its new Director Isabelle Bertolotti.

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thierry Ehrmann, Artprice's CEO/Founder, explains "Created in 1991 by Thierry Raspail, the Lyon Biennale has become one of the most remarkable cultural events of its kind worldwide. I particularly remember the legendary 2000 edition when Jean-Hubert Martin achieved a veritable tour-de-force with his Biennale entitled Shared Exoticism. The event was exceptionally coherent and relevant, a direct and logical suite to his founding exhibition The Magicians of the Earth presented in 1989 at the Pompidou Center.

Steered by Thierry Raspail for nearly 30 years, the Lyon Biennale has earned a global reputation and has been supported – in particular for Shared Exoticism – by its institutional partner Artprice and the Organe Contemporary Art Museum which manages The Abode of Chaos. Over the years it has come to overshadow the Paris Biennale, founded by André Malraux in 1959 and the last edition of which was in 2008."

The Lyon Biennale is today at a crucial juncture with the first change of management in its history and the arrival of Isabelle Bertolotti. Recently appointed Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of the City of Lyon, Bertoletti is expected to set the Lyon Biennale on a new path and her first project is indeed ambitious: "This 15th edition of the Lyon Contemporary Art Biennale is devised as an ecosystem at the intersection of biological, economic and cosmogonic landscapes. It bears witness to the shifting relationships between human beings, other living species, the mineral kingdom, technological artefacts and the stories that unite them"