The Routledge Companion to Art Biennials

Buch | Hardcover

546 Seiten

2026
Routledge (Verlag)
9781041155317 (ISBN)

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Grouping together contributors from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, this book gives a comprehensive account of art biennials in their complexity, diversity and ambiguity.

The Routledge Companion to Art Biennials assembles forty-six chapters that explore art biennials as expanded sites of artistic display, cultural policy, economic value, soft power, urban development and political struggle. The volume traces biennials from their 19th-century origins to their explosive post-Cold War growth, critically engaging with debates on globalization, institutional critique, identity, inclusion and resistance.

Structured in eight parts, it maps biennial histories from Venice to São Paulo and beyond, alongside their geopolitical and institutional entanglements. Bringing together contributors from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, the volume offers a comprehensive account of art biennials in their complexity and ambiguity, while outlining the main orientations and state of research in the field of biennial studies.

The volume will appeal to scholars and students in art history, museum and curatorial studies, as well as cultural geography, cultural sociology, critical theory, public sphere studies, media and communication studies, postcolonial theory, anthropology and cultural and creative industries, making it essential for examining contemporary art and visual culture’s institutional ecosystems.

Panos Kompatsiaris is an associate professor of media cultures at HSE Univserity. He holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh (2015) and has guest-lectured at IULM University, Franklin University and the Athens School of Fine Arts, among others. His latest monograph is Curation in the Age of Platform Capitalism (2024)

List of Figures

List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

1. Art Biennials: An Introduction

Panos Kompatsiaris

PART I: HISTORIES AND SHIFTS

2. Art is not an Innocent Field: Reflection on the borders of the Venice Biennal. Vittoria Martini

3. Turning the Biennale into the BBC: The Reform of the Venice Biennale in the Post-War Period (1945–1973)

Elisa Bassetto

4. Defining Geographies Through International Art Exhibitions in Cold War Divided Europe (1955-1959)

Matteo Bertelé

5. An informal offensive: the battle of abstract art in the 5th São Paulo Biennial in 1959

Ana Avelar and Marcella Imparato

6. The 1st Quito Biennial: isolation and power struggles in the Ecuadorian modern art scene during the late sixties

Anamaría Garzón Mantilla

7. Redefining the biennial aims and model: Venice and São Paulo in a shared debate after the outbreak of the crisis (1968-1969)

Anita Orzes

PART II: NATION AND POLICY

8. Exhibiting the nation: framing post-Empire British identity at the Venice Art Biennale

Claudia Di Tosto

9. Art and politics during the cold war: Spain at the São Paulo biennial

Genoveva Tusell

10. The Biennial experience in Mexico: from a nationalist effort to contemporary globalism

Marco Polo Juarez Cruz

11. Between Cultural Diplomacy and Propaganda: Unveiling Saudi Arabia's National Participation at the Venice Biennales

Anastasia Shanaah

12. “Maybe a Biennial Would Come to Town”: Non-Istanbulite Biennials in Turkey

Erdem Çolak

PART III: THE BURGEONING FORMAT

13. Early-Boom Biennials in a Pacified World

Paloma Checa-Gismero

14. Late Soviet Tallinn Print Triennial: International in Form, Regional in Content

Kädi Talvoja

15. Japanese Biennials and Triennials as Art Festivals Embracing Chiiki āto: A Case Study of Setouchi Triennale

Mengfei Pan

16. Biennials of the Arab World: Trans-Arabism as an Attempt at Emancipation from Nationalist Hegemony

Riccardo Legena

17. From Lagoon to Coast: A Critical Analysis of Venice and Dakar Biennials' Organizational Structures and Curatorial Exchanges.

Amarildo Ajasse

18. The Johannesburg Biennales: Chasing a fleeing Shadow

Tabea Maria Brinkmann

PART IV: FORMATS AND INFRASTRUCTURES

19. The Celebrated International Curator: A Key Figure for the Art Biennial

Guillaume Sirois & Samuel Bonneville

20. And every two years, we do it all again…Reflecting on the discursivity and archives of biennials

Gabriela Saenger Silva

21. Assembling assemblies or how public programs do matter in large-scale exhibitions: The case of the Parliament of Bodies during documenta 14

Jasmin Kolkwitz

22. Periodical Mania and Agricultural Models of Publishing in Art Biennials

Camilla Salvaneschi

23. World-Making as a Matter of Scales: A Conversation on the 13th Taipei Biennial

Ting Tsou and Barbara Lutz

PART V: ACTIVISM AND COUNTER-BIENNIALS

24. Istanbul Biennial and the Contested Cultural Sphere in Turkey

Tijen Tunali

25. Cohabitations between biennials and commoning The case of Athens Biennale 5-6, OMONOIA (2015-2017)

Sevie Tsampalla

26. Entangled biennials as tactical (trans)instituting: Connecting art ecosystems to make new worlds thrive

Chiara De Cesari, Yazan Khalili & Eszter Szakács (IMAGINART)

27. #00Bienal de La Habana: From "Biennials of Resistance" to Biennial Resistivity

Amy Bruce

28. Biennials of Resistance – A View from Kosovo and Some Questions Left Unanswered

Giulia Menegale

29. The First Bienal do Mercosul: Re-Writing the History of Art from the Margins

Camilla Querin

PART VI: PUBLIC SPHERES

30. Documenta, Democracy & the Crisis of Liberalism

Sarah E. James

31. The “global” in biennial discourse

Kerstin Winking

32. Trauma, Memory, and Art: Preserving the Spirit of Gwangju through the Biennale

Raymond Rohne

33. Syrcas at Africus: On Maud Sulter, the Johannesburg Biennale and Cultural Extravagance

Nomusa Makhubu and Lucy Steeds

34. An Elephant under the Microscope. The case of the Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA)

Sebastian Mühl and Mara Traumane

PART VII: IDENTITY AND POWER

35. From Transition to Extraction: Manifesta’s Nomadic Exhibitions in the Post-socialist Balkans

Dimitra Gkitsa

36. First Class Experience? Art Biennials and Classism

Alessa K. Paluch

37. Magiciens de la Terre: A Biennial That Never Happened

Vesna Madžoski

38. A national pavilion “everywhere”: The female italian pavilion at the 1999 Venice Art Biennale

Greta Boldorini

39. The Politics of Local and Global in Biennials. The Case Study of Manifesta and its 12th Edition

Giulia Pollicita

40. Complicit Cartographies: The Global Biennial Cycle and the Syrian Refugee Crisis, 2015-2018

Eileen P. McKiernan González

PART VIII: EPISTEMOLOGY AND THEORY

41. Documenta fifteen: continuities and ruptures in the epistemic impasse of an art biennial

Giulia Bellinetti

42. The Sociology of Art Biennials and Globalization: Biennials as Symptom, Driving Force, World Event

Aleksandra Barjaktarević and Paul Buckermann

43. Biennials as administrative hubs of contemporaneity

Clarissa Ricci

44. ‘Out of thin air’: Technology, Liberation, and Absent Labour in New Materialist Biennial Exhibitions of Contemporary Art

Natassa Philimonos

45. The Art Biennial as a Hyper Object

Zoran Poposki

46. The exhibition that no one will ever see: the rise (and fall?) of the mega-exhibition format

Bill Balaskas

Erscheint lt. Verlag	13.3.2026
Reihe/Serie	Routledge Art History and Visual Studies Companions
Zusatzinfo	2 Tables, black and white; 45 Halftones, black and white; 45 Illustrations, black and white
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	174 x 246 mm
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Kunstgeschichte / Kunststile
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Hilfswissenschaften
	Wirtschaft
ISBN-13	9781041155317 / 9781041155317
Zustand	Neuware