Events15e biennale de Lyon
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15e biennale de Lyon
Past: September 18, 2019 → January 5, 2020
Thanks to the exceptional Fagor Factory site being made available — a complex of more than 29,000 sqm in central Lyon — the 15th edition is unprecedented in scale. This huge disused facility, together with all the mac LYON space and interventions throughout greater Lyon and in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, make up an outsized field of experimentation that is ripe for the artists’ taking and giving the event a new dimension.
Slash invites you to discover this 15th edition by following three artists.
Ashley Hans Scheirl and Jakob Lena Knebl
Ashley Hans Scheirl and Jakob Lena Knebl are staging gender, identity, and economic issues, together or separately. At the Biennale, they are intervening as a duo. Inspired by modernist design, dark romanticist painting, and Glam Rock, they will set up a space of desire where bodies, objects and images are staged to form an alternative, queer reference system. Exuding an uncanny and parodic spirit, their installation humorously and flamboyantly combines scenography, painting, sculpture, video and fashion design to interrogate the dark side of the social value system and neoliberal economics.
Malin Bülow
Malin Bülow creates large site-specific performative installations that highlight dancers’ skin, which becomes a sculptural element that generates tension. The performers thus activate her sense-engaging and claustrophobia-inducing interventions. For the Biennale, she proposes a performed action, slow and extended, where tentacular bodies blend into the building’s architecture and conjure a landscape commensurate with the scale of the site.
Petrit Halilaj
The work of Petrit Halilaj is related to the recent history of his country, Kosovo, and to the consequences of its political and cultural tensions. His works are pervaded by themes of ethnic conflict and war, which the artist addresses by rejecting any kind of pathos and adopting a critical yet optimistic approach, which enables him to more broadly examine concepts of nationhood and cultural identity. A large installation, Shkrepëtima (“flash” or “lightning bolt” in Albanian), recontextualises the sets, costumes and stage props of a one night performance that the artist gave in Runik in 2018. The piece continues the artist’s research into the historical roots of the small Kosovar town where he grew up, while reflecting on the potential of art and the value of memory.
