Contour Biennale 8
Polyphonic Worlds: Justice as Medium
Professional & VIP preview: 10.3.2017
Press Preview: 9.3.2017

Contour Biennale 8 Polyphonic Worlds: Justice as Medium opening 10 March 2017 announces participating artists. The eighth biennale edition presents several newly commissioned works by over twenty artists and collectives spread across several historical venues.

Artists and Collectives

Adelita Husni-Bey, Agency, Ana Torfs, Arvo Leo, Basir Mahmood, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Council, Eric Baudelaire, Filipa César and Louis Henderson, Ho Tzu Nyen, Inhabitants, Judy Radul, Karrabing Film Collective, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Madonna Staunton, Otobong Nkanga, Pallavi Paul, Pedro Gómez-Egaña, Rana Hamadeh, Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, Rossella Biscotti, Susanne M. Winterling, Trevor Paglen, Trinh Thi Nguyen

Contour Biennale 8

Contour Biennale 8 is developed through artistic acts that challenge procedures of testimony, evidence production and witnessing; as well as the performative nature of the trial. The Great Council established in Mechelen during the fifteenth century stands as a historical reminder of a court architecture that first sought to address the European Lowlands through rational jurisprudence. We now face the limits of justice unraveling as a volatile crisis of ethics within our collective present. Contour Biennale 8 engages a polyphonic view, recalling the acoustic history of the Lowlands — presenting a multiplicity of voices that become heard as a plural consciousness, and at times as states of discord. Setting a stage to question the preconceived boundaries between the perception of legality and illegality within today’s experience of statehood. This biennale edition brings together a range of collective practices as live processes of collaborative thinking and social imagination within the exhibition.