From November 15, 2024 to February 28, 2025, will take place one of the most significant and sui generis artistic events in the countries of the South: the XV Havana Biennial.
The most attractive and distinctive thing about the Havana Biennial is its ability to take the city itself as a setting, although the visual proposal in traditional spaces such as art galleries, studios or museums is wide and varied. Artists are invited to create together in the communities, as a profitable exchange experience and its extension to other cities in the country is planned.
The Havana Biennial turns the avenues and other public places of the picturesque Caribbean capital into artistic spaces with large-format works on the facades of buildings and public spaces, performances, etc. The streets of Cuba look a little more like an open-air museum.
Under the idea of “Shared Horizons” as its conceptual platform, the XV Biennial has been designed as an affective network that is committed to respecting differences and valuing knowledge and experiences that move away from hegemonic models.
The plot of the 15th Biennial will unfold from three conceptual cores: mediation, collaboration and interdisciplinarity, as Nelson Ramírez de Arellano, director of the Wifredo Lam Center and the event, explained to the press. We hope that artists not only live the experience of Cuba, but also create together with its inhabitants in the communities, added its Director.
The Havana Biennial is organized on the basis of a research and curatorial process, and all participants are selected according to certain parameters such as thematic-conceptual submission to the topic of reflection. In this process, the curatorial team of the Wifredo Lam Contemporary Art Center in Havana receives the support of colleagues from other countries who contribute their suggestions and become the necessary links in the dialogue with the creators.
The 14th Havana Biennial, from November 12, 2021 to April 30, 2022, was visited by more than a million people and brought together 655 artists, 484 Cubans and 171 foreigners from more than 30 countries. The vast majority managed their projects with 58 exhibitions and 71 events in the nine Cuban provinces that served as sub-venues of the Biennial.
Artists from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Panama, Peru, El Salvador, Chile, Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Paraguay and Bermuda Islands attended the XIV Biennial. Also present were works by creators from Japan, the Philippines, Jordan, Iran, Spain, France, Germany, Sweden, Portugal, Austria, England, Belgium, Scotland, Finland, Italy, Benin, South Africa, Senegal and Cameroon.
We encourage you to participate in the Havana Biennial to introduce the culture, life, realities and landscapes of your country to Cuba and foreign visitors. We invite you to visit Cuba, not only to immerse yourself in a new mega cultural event of Cuban and world art like the Biennial. Also so that you can discover, in addition, the rich culture of Cuba, the charm of its old colonial villas, declared a World Heritage by UNESCO, its gastronomy, the exotic land and underwater landscapes and beaches and of course, the hospitality and kindness of its people.
The Havana Biennial, founded in 1984, is a contemporary art event organized by the Wifredo Lam Center whose fundamental purpose is to contribute to the better knowledge and dissemination of the visual arts of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean and their diásporas. It is considered "the first biennial of Latin American art."
The Havana Biennial has focused its attention on artists from the South whose works represent concerns and conflicts – often of universal scope – common to their regions, turning Havana into an important meeting place and exhibition of “non-Western” art.
For more information visit: www.bienalhabana.cult.cu or contact the Cuban Embassy in Mongolia through email: embajada@mn.embacuba.cu or the Cuban Embassy or Consulate closest to your country of residence.