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26.06.2025

At UNESCO, Paris, BIENALSUR 2025 launches its 5th edition, with Michelangelo Pistoletto, and more than 400 artists in 78 cities and 34 countries.

Practical Information

From 26 June to winter 2025

PRESS CONTACT Hilel Ghozzi hghozzi@communicart.fr 07 49 24 72 01

Photo;
Michelangelo Pistoletto, Diana Wechsler, Aníbal Jozami at UNESCO headquarters. © Bienalsur

On 2 June 2025, BIENALSUR unveiled its 2025 programme at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. For its fifth edition, the largest cultural platform in the world continues its expansion, adding new locations to its ever-evolving transnational map. In doing so, it reaffirms its commitment to a contemporary humanism — a vision in which art constitutes a powerful vehicle for sensory and intellectual experiences accessible to as many people as possible.

Alongside Aníbal Jozami, general director of BIENALSUR, and Diana Wechsler, its artistic director, the event brought together Lazare Eloundou Assomo, director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, as well as the celebrated Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto, godfather of this special edition. Known for his deep commitment to creative resistance and humanist values, Pistoletto is tipped for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. "Art points to the direction the world should follow. This initiative is built on that conviction. Art, religion, politics and science must move forward together to achieve peace," he said at the symbolic launch of BIENALSUR 2025 at UNESCO.

With an ever-expanding geography, BIENALSUR now spans 19,640 kilometres across five continents. Present in 140 venues spread across 78 cities, the biennial highlights the work of more than 400 artists engaged with major contemporary issues: environmental crises, human rights, migration, memory, artificial intelligence and possible futures.

"Our goal is clear: to reach audiences wherever they are. We believe art is a vehicle for reflection, transformation and emancipation. When experienced as a shared experience, it affirms the role of individuals as active citizens rather than passive consumers of culture. That is why we continue to develop this platform, open to experimentation, debate and the collective building of a contemporary humanism." — Aníbal Jozami, founder of BIENALSUR

Faced with the urgency and volatility of today's world, BIENALSUR remains in motion, constantly adapting and maintaining an active dialogue with the artists, curators and institutions joining its growing community.
It continues to promote the right to culture through exhibitions that map out new patterns of artistic and social circulation.

"Amid the unregulated, indiscriminate flow of images and information, we develop projects that help to 'produce meaning'. Our work is driven by desire, imagination, creativity, flexibility, adaptability and diversity. We aim to spark reflection, rather than provide solutions." — Diana Wechsler, founder and artistic director of BIENALSUR

Incubated at UNTREF (National University of Tres de Febrero, a public Argentine university) and organised in collaboration with the Foro del Sur Foundation, BIENALSUR, now in its fifth edition, has established itself as an innovative model of cultural management and international cooperation.

The 2025 edition will begin on 26 June in Bogotá, Colombia, at the Bogotá Museum of Modern Art (MAMBO) and the Museum of the Bank of the Republic. It will then unfold across other key venues, notably the Instituto Cervantes in Shanghai. China, Canada, Hungary, Mozambique, Norway, Panama, Poland, South Africa and East Timor have recently joined the initiative.

The network also continues to expand in countries already partnered with BIENALSUR. In Italy, for example, Milan, Bologna, Naples and Biella have joined the project. In Biella, home to Cittadellarte Onlus — founded by Michelangelo Pistoletto — an artist residency programme and an exhibition will be organised.

In Spain, new venues include Irún, Santiago de Compostela and Cádiz, at the Unicaja Cultural Centre. Numerous public and private institutions around the world continue to be part of the BIENALSUR community, including the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid and Les Abattoirs, the museum of modern and contemporary art in Toulouse.

In Argentina, the 10th anniversary celebration will take place on 5 July at Kilómetro 0 — MUNTREF Centre for Contemporary Art, located in the former Hotel de Inmigrantes in Buenos Aires. "Let's Play / Juguemos en el mundo", a curatorial proposal that will extend to several BIENALSUR venues around the world, will make its debut there, alongside other projects.

In France, 8 BIENALSUR 2025 events, from October to December 2025

In keeping with the volatility and urgency of present times, BIENALSUR adopts a dynamic of permanent "work in progress", continuously adjusting its schedule according to the requests of the community of institutions and artists that make up the biennial. "They are the true protagonists of BIENALSUR," noted Diana Wechsler.

With the Centre Pompidou, moving image and experimentation will take centre stage in the presentation of the archives and works of artist Narcisa Hirsch, recently added to the Centre Pompidou's collection, as part of a valorisation project in collaboration with BIENALSUR and the INHA – Institut national d'histoire de l'art. At the Mk2 Bibliothèque, BIENALSUR and the Centre Pompidou will bring artists from the biennial and the French museum into dialogue. The Maison de l'Amérique Latine will host a Latin American video-art programme, featuring works by artists taking part in the biennial.

In Bordeaux, the Maison de Goya will become a space for reflection on "Migrations of meaning", through a dialogue between the works of artists Shuai Liu (China) and Leticia El Halli Obeid (Argentina). Memory, tongues, languages, translations between different worlds, the difficulties of communication, the impact of reading on the perception of reality, writing and its material trace — these are all themes that will, again and again, challenge visitors to this exhibition.

Since 2023, FRAC Corsica has been developing a collaborative programme with the Biennial around artistic exchange. Titled "Résidences croisées" (Cross Residencies), this project has enabled artists from Saudi Arabia, France and Argentina to compare perspectives, resulting in a series of exhibitions in Argentina, Saudi Arabia and Corsica. In 2025, it will be the turn of young video artists from France and Argentina to experience this immersive exchange. The artists selected by the two partner institutions are Nicolás Quiriconi and Julieta Tarraubella.

In Toulouse, the Université Jean Jaurès hosts the project "Le silence des lucioles" (The Silence of Fireflies), which will unfold between an international symposium and an exhibition at La Fabrique, the university's contemporary art space. This project takes as its starting point light — understood as energy emitted by a body — that observation satellites capture and which reveals, or makes perceptible, the sudden darkening of certain areas of the globe. Thanks to a wide detection range, light becomes a revealer of zones of life, survival, control or counter-surveillance — even protection. Starting from what shines and from the automated extraction of information, new possibilities open up for multi-scalar images in artistic creation, as well as for political reflection on deserts and geographic defections, and territories in conflict.

Artists taking part in the exhibition: Mohammed Sami (Iraq), Nicolas Floch (Portugal), Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil (France), Peter Atwood (Canada), Mustapha Azeroual (France-Morocco), Léa Beloosovitch (France), Annika Keppner (Germany), Max de Esteban (Spain), John Melo (Colombia).

At the Abattoirs, Toulouse, and at CENTQUATRE, Paris, further information will be available soon.

"In 2025, the aim of the work carried out between BIENALSUR and its French partners is to reflect, through each of the projects, the possible relationship between the poetic and the political." — Diana Wechsler, artistic director of BIENALSUR