Arts & International Affairs: 2.3: Autumn/Winter 2017 | Page 60

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
4 th Mediterranean Biennial of Contemporary Art of Oran, Algeria,
(4éme Biennale Méditerranéenne d’Art Contemporain d’Oran)
July 2–31, 2017
Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Oran/MAMO 5
T
oday’s mixture of classic and unconventional biennials has been exploring where
we are going globally in terms of art, its movements, and its connections to glo-
balization. The curated sections of this year’s Venice Biennale at the Arsenale and
Giardini focused more on texture, form, and color rather than politics, while some of the
individual pavilions handed out unique passports and visas such as the Tunisian Freesa
and the NSK pavilion passport. Although these ideas are not new, since it was Jorge and
Lucy Orta who gave out Antarctica World Passports at the 9 th Shanghai Biennale back
in 2012, they are an indication that artists are still challenging the viewer and the world
of politics.
Recently, such avant-garde approaches to the biennial format as the Museum of Non-Vis-
ible Art Biennial (MONA Biennial), The Wrong (biennale), 6 which combines digital
pavilions with physical exhibitions around the world, and the Worldwide Apartment
and Studio Biennial 7 have created a different context all together for the purpose and
venue of a biennial in contemporary times. The United States has seen a rise in interest in
Islamic art with the displays at the Museum of Modern Art being changed over to repre-
sent Islamic art in the collection as a protest to travel bans 8 as well as the active collecting
happening with the important Guggenheim UBS Map Global Art Initiative, 9 which has
expanded the collection to include more artists from South and Southeast Asia, Latin
America, the Middle East and North Africa. In Spain, the recent exhibit, Making Africa,
showed at the CCCB, Center of Contemporary Art of Barcelona, 10 and represented art-
ists and designers from all over Africa, and was a more than subtle hint at the necessity of
constructing a vision of Africa of the future through art. Still in Venice, we had a limited
amount of representation from Africa and its diaspora with the Diaspora Pavilion, in-
cluding some key emerging artists and mentor artists of influence from multiple diaspo-
ras, and the Nigerian (for the first time), Egyptian and South African Pavilions.
The Mediterranean Biennial of Contemporary Art of Oran, Algeria, which is in its fourth
edition this year, is entitled, Exodus, and is themed from the heart, refusing to indulge in
https://www.founoune.com/index.php/mamo-musee-dart-moderne-contemporain-doran-ouvre-
portes-21-mars-2017/
6
http://thewrong.org/The-Wrong-biennale
7
http://www.wasbiennale.com/
8
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/18/autossell/proposed-travel-ban-at-art-dubai-its-plainly-wrong.
html
9
https://www.guggenheim.org/map
10
http://www.cccb.org/es/exposiciones/ficha/making-africa/213052
5
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