Frame Contemporary Art Finland has the great pleasure to announce a lecture by Katerina Gregos, Chief Curator of the inaugural edition of The Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art to be launched in June 2018.
The event is organised in collaboration with HAM Helsinki Art Museum at HAM seminar room (Eteläinen Rautatiekatu 8) on Thursday 16 November at 10.30 am–12.30 pm. The lecture is in English and open for the public. Welcome!
The Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA) is a major new international biennial initiative, with a European focus and a strong regional profile, founded in 2016. Taking the rich history of Riga and the Baltic states as its underlying framework, the Biennial highlights the artistic landscape of the wider region and creates opportunities for artists to enter into dialogue with the cultural, historical and socio-political context of the city and its geographic surrounds.
Taking into account criticisms of the proliferation of biennial culture, or ‘biennialisation’ as it has been called, RIBOCA aims to create a sustainable model based on best practices that prioritise artists, artistic production and the meticulous presentation and mediation of art. The Biennial is based on a working process that starts from the local, expanding to the national and the regional, and finally to the transnational. The Biennial aims to take root and make roots in the place where it is situated. Reflecting the biennial’s global outlook and mission to increase artistic engagement between the Baltic region and the rest of the world, a significant proportion of the commissioned and selected artists either live, work or were born in the Baltic region, a territory which still remains relatively unexplored despite its prolific artistic production.
RIBOCA sees itself as a critical site of artistic experimentation and knowledge production, an activator of co-operation and exchange between local and regional actors and institutions, an instigator of generosity towards peers, and a barometer of current social, political and economic issues filtered through artistic practices.
Katerina Gregos is a curator, writer and lecturer born in Athens and based in Brussels. Gregos has curated several critically acclaimed large-scale exhibitions and biennials including most recently: A World Not Ours, Kunsthalle Mulhouse (2017); the Belgian Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, Personne et les autres: Vincent Meessen & Guests; the 5th Thessaloniki Biennial, Between the Pessimism of the Intellect and the Optimism of the Will (2015); The Politics of Play for the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art and Liquid Assets: In the Aftermath of the Transformation of Capital, Steirischer Herbst, Graz (2013); Newtopia: The State of Human Rights, several venues, Mechelen & Brussels (2012). That year she was also co-curator of Manifesta 9: In the Deep of the Modern, Genk.
Apart from her experience as an independent curator, Gregos has served as founding director and curator of the Deste Foundation’s Centre for Contemporary Art in Athens, Artistic Director of Argos Centre for Art and Media, Brussels and Artistic Director of Art Brussels. Currently she is also curator of the Schwarz Foundation (Munich/Samos/Athens).
Image: Courtesy RIBOCA: Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Riga.