San José und Puerto Limón
Costa Rica

30. August - 30. September 2016

Generalkuratorin: Tamara Díaz Bringas

Ko-Kuratoren: 
Adán Vallecillo (Honduras) 
Edgar León (Costa Rica) 
Gladioska García (Nicaragua) 
Gladys Turner Bosso (Panama) 
Marlov Barrios (Guatemala) 
Simón Vega (El Salvador)

70 Künstler und Gruppen

Fototour ►
Highlights der Ausstellungen und Projekte

Die Bienal Centroamericana (Zentralamerikanische Biennale) wird seit 1998 veranstaltet. Ausgerichtet von einer Gruppe von Fachleuten und Unternehmern aus der Region, waren die neun bisherigen Editionen am Prinzip wechselnder Austragungsortes orientiert. Deshalb fand die Biennale immer wieder in einer anderen Hauptstadt Zentralamerikas statt und brachte Werke von jeweils sechs Künstlerinnen und Künstlern aus jedem Land zusammen: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama.

Seit 18 Jahren ist die Biennale ein gemeinsamer Treffpunkt der Region, der Künstler und Werke aus unterschiedlichen Kontexten versammelt und einen Bereich fortwährenden Verhandelns zwischen den institutionellen Bedingungen und der künstlerischen Praxis ermöglicht sowie einen systematischen Raum der Visibilität und Legitimation für die Kunst Zentralamerikas bietet.

For its tenth edition, with Costa Rica as the host country and the host organization being Empresarios por el Arte, chaired by architect Ronald Zürcher, the biennial decided to change its model to one based on a regional curatorship. The project "Embroidery and overflows" by curator Tamara Diaz Bringas was selected for the X Central American Biennial, aiming to consolidate the existing cultural networks, as well as promoting and strengthening ongoing research processes and artistic experimentation.

For the X Central American Biennial, a conceptual framework was proposed entitled “All the Lives” which derived from the curatorial process initiated in mid-2015, which included meetings, discussions and exchanges with artists, groups and active spaces from each of the countries.

Some of the questions stated where: How can we collectively define the conditions for a livable life? What processes facilitate sustainability and expansion of life, and which instead pose a threat to vital processes in a subjective, ecological and social sense? What tools can we use to question a system that prioritizes some lives as worthy while considering others as residual? Is it possible to revert inequality?

"All the Lives" posed questions about institutions and practices that distribute the normal and the monstrous, how standardization technologies work on our bodies, our relationships and our behaviors, and how to imagine other ways of living and relating. The X Central American Biennial interrogated that which is public and affirmed the collective as resistance to confinement in the private, or the privatization of that which is collective, and questioned the role of art in the invention of other spaces of sociality, play, party, collective organization.

The X Central American Biennial was developed in an expanded format, which included activities, workshops or exhibitions within the six countries of the region, before and after the event in September 2016. In Costa Rica, from August the 30th to the 30th of September, the biennial was held at various venues and public spaces.

In Puerto Limon, the main exhibition took place in the central galleries of the building which was once the headquarters of the United Fruit Company, while in San Jose, it was displayed throughout downtown San Jose, in various institutions and independent spaces including the following: Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo, Museo Nacional, Museo Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia, Centro de Investigación y Conservación del Patrimonio Cultural, Centro Cultural de España, TEOR/éTica, Despacio and Durmiente de Otoya.

(Information from the Central American Biennial)