| Manifesta – European Biennial of Contemporary Art | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Genre | biennale, focus on contemporary art |
| Begins | 1994 |
| Frequency | biennial, every two year. |
| Location(s) | Itinerant |
| Previous event | Manifesta 15 (2024) |
| Next event | Manifesta 16 (2026) |
| Organised by | International Foundation Manifesta |
| Website | manifesta |
Manifesta, also known as the European Nomadic Biennial, is a European pan-regional contemporary cultural biennale. [1]
Manifesta was founded in 1994 by Dutch art historian Hedwig Fijen. [2] The first edition took place in Rotterdam. One of the coordinators in Rotterdam was Thomas Meyer zu Schlochtern of the Rotterdamse Kunststichting. [3] Among the local artists brought into the international scene, were Jeanne van Heeswijk, Bik Van Der Pol, and Joep van Lieshout. [4]
The 2006 edition of Manifesta was set to happen in Nicosia, Cyprus, under the direction of Florian Waldvogel, Mai Abu ElDahab, and Anton Vidokle. In June 2006, Nicosia for Art, the city-run nonprofit organization sponsoring the exhibition, cancelled the event due to political turmoil around the green line of Nicosia. [5]
Previous editions have taken place in Rotterdam (1996), Luxembourg (1998), Ljubljana (2000), Frankfurt (2002), San Sebastián (2004), Nicosia (2006 – cancelled), Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol (2008), Murcia in dialogue with northern Africa (2010), Limburg (2012), Saint Petersburg (2014), Zürich (2016), Palermo (2018), [6] and Marseille (2020 – known as Manifesta 13, it took place despite the COVID-19 pandemic). In 2022, Manifesta is being hosted by Pristina, followed by Barcelona in 2024, and Ruhr in 2026.
The 10th edition of Manifesta in Saint Petersburg in Russia created tensions as the government had just prohibited "gay propaganda". [7]
The 12th edition of Manifesta was held in Palermo, Italy, around the theme "The Planetary Garden. Cultivating Coexistence". The exhibition put forward an interpretation of the city's history as the expression of a syncretism of cultures across the Mediterranean. The curators used the idea of the garden as a metaphor on how it might be possible to aggregate differences and to compose life out of movement and migration. [8]
After the cancellation of Manifesta 13 (planned to have been held in Marseille) due to Covid19, Manifesta 14 was held in Pristina, Kosovo, in 2022. [9] [10]
Manifesta's Education and Mediation programme is a part of each Manifesta Biennial. The education team is among the first to begin developing programmes in Manifesta's host cities. The programmes created by the team are derived from conversations, extensive field research and sociocultural and educational mapping.
The programme is developed collaboratively with artists and associations of the host city and includes projects that are educational, curatorial, artistic, research-based, and accessible to everyone. The education team is responsible for developing a discursive mediation and a critical perspective on the curatorial project. Additionally the team creates a set of interrelated research-and-practice-based programmes focussed on local knowledge and practices. [11]
| Year | Edition | Place | Theme | Curated by | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1996 | 1st | Rotterdam | Katalyn Neray Rosa Martinez Viktor Misiano Andrew Renton Hans-Ulrich Obrist | ||
| 1998 | 2nd | Luxembourg | Robert Fleck Maria Lind Barbara Vanderlinden | ||
| 2000 | 3rd | Ljubljana | "Borderline Syndrome. Energies of Defence" | Francesco Bonami Ole Bouman Maria Hlavajová Kathrin Rhomberg | |
| 2002 | 4th | Frankfurt | Iara Boubnova Nuria Enguita Mayo Stéphanie Moisdon | ||
| 2004 | 5th | San Sebastián | Massimiliano Gioni Marta Kuzma | ||
| 2006 | 6th | Nicosia | Cancelled [5] | Florian Waldvogel Mai Abu ElDahab Anton Vidokle | |
| 2008 | 7th | Franzensfeste | "100 Miles in 100 Days" [12] | Adam Budak Raqs Media Collective | |
| 2010 | 8th | Murcia | Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF) Chamber of Public Secrets (CPS) tranzit.org |   | |
| 2012 | 9th | Genk | Cuauhtémoc Medina Dawn Adès Katerina Gregos | ||
| 2014 | 10th | Saint Petersburg | Kasper König [7] [13] | ||
| 2016 | 11th | Zurich | "What People Do for Money: Some Joint Ventures" | Christian Jankowski Francesca Gavin [14] |  |
| 2018 | 12th | Palermo | "The Planetary Garden. Cultivating Coexistence" | Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli Mirjam Varadinis Andrés Jaque Bregtje van der Haak |  |
| 2020 | 13th | Marseille [15] [16] | Indefinitely postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic | Alya Sebti, Katerina Chuchalina, Stefan Kalmár | |
| 2022 | 14th | Pristina [17] | "It matters what worlds world worlds: how to tell stories otherwise" | Catherine Nichols Carlo Ratti | |
| 2024 | 15th | Barcelona [18] | "Balancing Conflicts", "Cure and Care" and "Imagining Futures" | Sergio Pardo López Filipa Oliveira | |
| 2026 | 16th | Ruhr | Josep Bohigas |
The Manifesta Biennial is owned and organized by Amsterdam-based International Foundation Manifesta (IFM).
The Venice Biennale is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy, by the Biennale Foundation. It focuses on contemporary art, and includes events for art, contemporary dance, architecture, cinema, and theatre. Two main components of the festival are known as the Art Biennale and the Architecture Biennale, which are held in alternating years. The others – Biennale Musica, Biennale Teatro, Venice Film Festival, and Venice Dance Biennale – are held annually. The main exhibition held in Castello alternates between art and architecture, and there are around 30 permanent pavilions built by different countries.
In the art world, a Biennale, Italian for "biennial" or "every other year", is a large-scale international contemporary art exhibition. The term was popularised by the Venice Biennale, which was first held in 1895, but the concept of such a large scale, and intentionally international event goes back to at least the 1851 Great Exhibition in London. The 1990s saw the boom of art biennials, a period of multiplication of this exhibition form during which art biennials grew from approximately five to over 250 internationally.
The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, United States. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932; the first biennial was in 1973. It is considered the longest-running and most important survey of contemporary art in the United States. The Biennial helped bring artists like Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, and Jeff Koons, among others, to prominence.
Sal Randolph is an American artist and theorist who works with issues of gift-giving, money, alternate economies, and social architecture. She founded the non-curated sound-exchange web project Opsound, which functions through the use of music released exclusively under a copyleft license, and has been cited by Lawrence Lessig as an example of how Creative Commons works to enable artists to collaborate more freely and build on each other's work. Other large-scale, collaborative projects created and implemented by Randolph include Free Manifesta and The Free Biennial, in which several hundred artists presented their work in free and open shows in New York's and Frankfurt am Main's public spaces. Artists participating in those projects included Christophe Bruno, Aram Saroyan, Swoon (artist), and Michael Cunningham, among many others.
Šejla Kamerić is a Bosnian visual artist.
Brighton Photo Biennial (BPB), now known as Photoworks Festival, is a month-long festival of photography in Brighton, England, produced by Photoworks. The festival began in 2003 and is often held in October. It plays host to curated exhibitions across the city of Brighton and Hove in gallery and public spaces. Previous editions have been curated by Jeremy Millar (2003), Gilane Tawadros (2006), Julian Stallabrass (2008), Martin Parr (2010) and Photoworks (2012). Brighton Photo Biennial announced its merger with Photoworks in 2006 and in 2020 its name was changed to Photoworks Festival.
Jeanne van Heeswijk is a Dutch visual artist and curator. Her work often focuses on social practice art, or the relationship between space, geography and urban renewal. She lives and works in Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
Bik van der Pol is the artists duo Liesbeth Bik and Jos van der Pol, who work together since 1994 as conceptual artists and installation artists.
Barbara Vanderlinden is a Belgian art historian, curator, and director.
Matteo Lucchetti is a curator and contemporary art critic based in Brussels. He is curator, together with Judith Wielander, of the Visible project, a research and biennial award for socially engaged artistic practices in a global context, initiated and supported by Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto and Fondazione Zegna.
Kamiel Verschuren is a Dutch conceptual interdisciplinary visual artist, living and working in Rotterdam.
Maria Marshall an English-Swiss artist born in Mumbai, India. She became known for her video work in the late 90’s, working mostly with children. Her recent works include "Thought", an alter ego character who can infiltrate the mind and replace thoughts. Based on meditation, this is a multimedia work which includes video, photography, painting and sculpture.
Alban Muja is a Kosovan contemporary artist and film-maker. In 2019 he represented Kosovo at the 58th Venice Biennale. In his work he is mostly influenced by the social, political and economical transformation processes in wider surrounding region, he investigates history and socio-political themes and links them to his position in Kosovo today. His works cover a wide range of media including video installation, films, drawings, paintings, photographs and performance which have been exhibited extensively in various exhibitions and festivals.
Thomas Meyer zu Schlochtern is a Dutch art historian and curator, who came into prominence as director of the Arti et Amicitiae and as curator at Rotterdamse Kunststichting in the 1990s.
Manifesta 13 was an art exhibition within the Manifesta European art biennial, hosted in Marseille, France, between August and November 2020.
Jeremy Shaw is a Canadian visual artist based in Berlin, Germany.
Petrit Halilaj is a Kosovar visual artist living and working among Germany, Kosovo, and Italy. The name "Petrit" literally means "Falcon". His work is based on documents, stories, and memories related to the history of Kosovo.
Adriano Pedrosa is a Brazilian curator. He is the artistic director of the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) and curated the 2024 Venice Biennale.
Jakup Ferri is a contemporary artist from Amsterdam, Netherlands and Pristina, Kosovo. He is a professor at Pristina Art Academy and guest advisor at Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Ferri's work has been shown at international exhibitions in museums and galleries, festivals and biennials, including Venice Biennale, Istanbul Biennial, Prague Biennale, Cetinje Biennale and Manifesta Biennale, Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Art.
Driton Selmani is a Kosovar contemporary visual artist whose practice spans across various media including installation, photography, text, and public art. His works often explore complex themes such as identity, politics, history, and social change, engaging viewers with a blend of humor, irony, and critical reflection.
