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- The worldwide enthusiasm for art biennials, triennials and other –ennial events rose during the 1990s and is continuing whereas this kind of exhibition format is not a new trend. Indeed, the Venice Biennale was founded in 1895, followed in 1896 by Carnegie International, the Bienal de São Paulo in 1951, Kassel's Documenta in 1955 and the Biennale of Sydney in 1973, just to name the firsts, mostly driven by capitalist-philanthropic spirit. This enthusiasm, which almost no country is exempted from (Dominique Malaquais points out that biennials are the new stadiums countries need to have in order to gain respect on the international arena), is the result of the correlation of three factors in the post-Cold War context that, accordingly to Bruce Ferguson, Reesa Greenberg and Sandy Nairne, can be identified as the worldwide development of the art market, the promotion of the arts as a support of cultural and national identity and the idea that art, seen as a universal language, is an instrument of exchange. Art biennials are also often the best idea for international exposure when a State cannot afford a national art museum and support local artists as Charlotte Bydler underlined it. Each biennial has its own specificity and history. There is not one model as such, but one common point is that art biennials are first and foremost political events. They are often the cultural response to a national will to favor cultural tourism, to solve a social or identity issue, to legitimize an economic boom or to encourage a process of urban innovation. Biennials are also tremendous observatories of globalization processes. By promoting a certain locality and at the same time benefitting from global interests, they favor the globalization paradox, which often creates great tensions on a local level. Biennials from the so-called 'peripheral' countries aspire to become other potential centers and to decentralize what was concentrated upon a Euro-American axis until the end of the Cold War. The African continent is no exception and countries started to organize art biennials (besides pan-African festivals which are not included in this account) since the 1950s. Nonetheless, the 1990s, a moment of geopolitical shifts both inside (e.g. the demise of apartheid in South Africa) and outside (e.g. the fall of the Iron Curtain in Europe) the continent, leading to political reorganization, the change of cultural politics and economics as well as urban renewal, were really the decade when art biennials started to be seen as the best 'invention' to promote local art and reach a global audience. (en)
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| rdfs:comment
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- The worldwide enthusiasm for art biennials, triennials and other –ennial events rose during the 1990s and is continuing whereas this kind of exhibition format is not a new trend. Indeed, the Venice Biennale was founded in 1895, followed in 1896 by Carnegie International, the Bienal de São Paulo in 1951, Kassel's Documenta in 1955 and the Biennale of Sydney in 1973, just to name the firsts, mostly driven by capitalist-philanthropic spirit. (en)
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