Curators announced for 6th Ural Industrial Biennial

The 6th Ural Industrial Biennial has announced curators of the main project, the artist-in-residence and public programs. The 6th edition of the biennial will take place in Ekaterinburg including the Ural region cities in fall 2021 under the title A Time to Embrace and to Refrain from Embracing, which is a slightly altered Ecclesiastes quote.

Main project
The selected proposal for the main project entitled Thinking hands, touching each other is developed by Çağla Īlk, Assaf Kimmel, and Misal Adnan Yıldız as a collective form and space defined between architecture, dramaturgy and curating. “The curatorial” will investigate possible forms of engagement considering touch, intimacy and human interaction. The inspiration was Revisiting Juhani Pallasma’s The Thinking Hand – Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture. Moreover, this topic is developed together with an interest in the complexities of gaze, memory, and politics of the image. The notions of touch, distance and proximity problematize here the industrial context of Ural as an architectural problem. By approaching the exhibitions as spaces for continuous mediation, the curatorial team imagines departs from performance, as the most compelling medium to understand damage, collapse, isolation, entropy and uncertainty.

On the occasion of the 100th Anniversary of Zamyatin’s paragon WE (1921), the project refers also to the character D-503 by Zamyatin, and proposes to keep journals, records and living documents of our time. Inspired by Kazimir Malevich’s “Planits” (his idea of human-made planets), it will create a critical map of the exhibition venues as a promenade in the city. Facing the paradigm shifts in relation to the biennial context, the curatorial trio departs from timely questions: What is the potentially critical biennial format during the transition of a global pandemic and a potential economic crisis or recession? How could we redefine the conditions, necessities and priorities of art tourism, traveling for art and transportation? Where can we discover a new understanding of public domain both in physical and online forms of gathering? Finally, the proposal brings a focus to researchers, professionals, experts and new publics as target audiences, instead of the art tourist.

Çağla Īlk: current Director of Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, former curator at Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin (2012-2020), co-curator of The 1-4th Berlin Autumn Salons (2013, 2015, 2017, 2019) and many other events and exhibitions in Germany and abroad. A member of the New Society for Visual Arts (nGbK) board, a former member of the Berlin Council for the Arts, and served on numerous juries for the improvement of cultural policies.

Assaf Kimmel: is an architect and curator based in Berlin, focusing on projects at the intersection of art, fashion and architecture. He currently works at the design and architecture studio sub, where he is designing the upcoming show of Anne Imhof at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and the reconstruction of Balenciaga’s historical atelier. Assaf previously completed projects for MMK in Frankfurt, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden and Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin.

Misal Adnan Yıldız: current Director of Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, and Ph.D. candidate with research focus on exhibition architecture. Previously, Yıldız served as artistic director (2011-2014) at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, and director (2015-2017) at Artspace Aotearoa. His exhibition proposals were selected through open calls by significant public institutions including Montehermoso, HISK, Palais de Tokyo.

Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art
The Ural Industrial Biennial is the largest international project in the field of contemporary art in the Russian Federation. It was first organized in 2010 at the initiative of the Ural branch of the National Center for Contemporary Arts and is held every two years in Ekaterinburg and other Ural region cities.

The following Biennial programs exist within a unified conceptual field outlined by the topic of main project and its subtopics:
–Artist-in-residence program
–Public program

Curators of the Biennial programs: Vladimir Seleznyov, Dmitrii Bezouglov, Valentina Anufrieva, Daria Malikova, Elizaveta Yuzhakova

Dates: Fall 2021
Organizer: The Ural Branch of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts
Co-Organizer: Center for Support and Development of Contemporary Art ZA ART
Commissioner: Alisa Prudnikova

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