“My Rhino is not a Myth”: hyper-digital realities, the modernist avant-garde and a world of contemporary art at Art Encounters Biennale Timisoara

The 5th edition of the Art Encounters Biennale, titled “My Rhino is not a Myth,” takes place in Timisoara up until July 16, and places its focus on the captivating intersection of art, science, and fiction. By delving into their potential to reshape our perception of reality as a intricate web of complex processes, the Biennale invites us to embark on a thought-provoking journey.

Under the curatorship of Adrian Notz, the Biennale establishes connections between hyper-digital realities, the avant-garde spirit of modernism, and the ever-evolving world of contemporary art. It navigates the realms of scientific exploration and imaginative speculation while delving into narratives of the unknown and the relentless pursuit of transformation, adaptation, and subversion.

The biennial finds inspiration in the extraordinary fusion of artistic and scientific imagination found in Albrecht Dürer’s renowned masterpiece, “Rhinoceros”. Painted in 1515, the artwork depicted a rhinoceros even though the artist had never encountered the creature in person. The rhinoceros’s subsequent journey across the globe mapped a geopolitical trajectory, while also serving as a poignant reminder that lesser-known stories of exploitation and violence often overshadowed tales of exploration and discovery.

By delving into other works of fiction that revolve around this iconic creature, such as Eugène Ionesco’s Theatre of the Absurd piece titled “Rhinocéros”, the biennial follows the stories inspired by this rhino, reclaiming the imaginative play of science and art in an entangled world marked by environmental and societal transformations. Through this exploration, the biennial seeks to revive the imaginative interplay between science and art, shedding light on the profound connections that exist between the two and the profound impact they can have on our understanding of the world.

For this occasion, 15 exhibition spaces become meeting points for people, ideas, cultures and communities, while atotal of 23 spaces in Timișoara, including exhibition spaces, complementary platform spaces, as well as spaces dedicated to events will be activated during the biennale through guided tours, the mediation program, art laboratories and conferences that the Art Encounters Foundation prepared together with partners.

The event brings together over 60 artists from 21 countries, some internationally recognized and others at the beginning of their journey, with a focus on promoting new talents. Among the invited artists at the Art Encounters Biennial 2023, there are newly commissioned works from Floriama Cândea, Anetta Mona Chisa, Alina Cioară, Kata Geibl, Maren Dagny Juell, Sakib Rahman Mizanur, Sebastian Moldovan, Sahil Naik, Katarina Petrović, Dimitar Solakov, and Sorina Vazelina.

The biennial therefore proposes a crossover of art, science, and fiction as new ways to look at things, underlining the vitality of their entanglement in the fabric of life and reality. They create “art-science-fictions” as a fluid exchange between scientific and artistic approaches that respond to changes in our lived realities, which are marked by environmental and social transformations.

Adrian Notz is joined by a young team of curators and writers – Cristina Bută, Monica Dănilă, Edith Lázár, Ann Mbuti, Cristina Stoenescu, and Georgia Țidorescu – as members of the advisory curatorial collective. The event takes place up until July 16, 2023, more information is available here.

Read also: Timisoara European Cultural Capital: over EUR 44 million investment for the program and up to one million visitors this year

New spaces for art in Timisoara

During Art Encounters, several spaces have been re-opened for the public. For example, the Huniade Castle, which is the oldest building in Timișoara, built between 1308-1315 by Carol Robert de Anjou and rebuilt after the earthquake of 1443 by Iancu de Hunedoara and the Italian architect Paolo Santini de Duccio (1443-1447). During the Ottoman occupation, the building was the residence of the Beylerbeyi of the Paşalâc of Timișoara. As a result of the siege of 1716 led by Eugene of Savoy, the building underwent a new reconstruction; starting from the 18th century, it became an artillery barracks. Finally, in the mid-19th century (1856), the Huniade Castle underwent its most extensive renovation and acquired the appearance it retains today. Since 1947, the Castle has housed the history and natural sciences sections of the National Museum of Banat. The castle has been closed to the public for the past 15 years, and only part of the building will reopen for the Biennial. In addition, there have been many disputes over the years about the quality of the restoration work.

Another space opened and transformed into art venue is STPT Multiplexity, built in 1927, which is the city’s old tram depot, who is living testimony and expression of the city’s progressive spirit. There are plans to transform this space into a Center for Art, Technology, and Experimentation. However, renovation work is still pending.

Meanwhile, at STPT Multiplexity, nature takes over the relics of its past, old tram cars and iron-clad rails, and the industrial sites become possible hosts for alternative visions of dark science fiction and new mythologies. They emphasise the fascinating side of collapsing worlds by looking beyond narrative boundaries and unveiling other ways of coexistence, be it at the edge of an event horizon after an atomic dispersion or at a point of no return, in a shelter at the end of history.

Urseni Water Treatment Plant, currently Museum of Water in Timisoara, has recently been renovated and expanded, being a new opening for arts. Following the urban regeneration works they have undergone, both plants now offer generous spaces for exhibitions, concerts, film screenings, videomapping, children’s activities, thematic guided tours featuring sequences from the city’s history, and more.

When Timisoara meets Bucharest courtesy of the Mexican artist Carlos Amorales

Carlos Amorales’ Black Cloud has been haunting our planet since 2007, not only in art spaces but also beyond them. In the aftermath of its installations, it was seen in an appropriated version in private homes, fashion stores and brands, and even human skin. Black Cloud originated in dream-like images of vaulted spaces filled with a swarm of moths and motivated its materialization in paper and installation by occupying first the entirety of the artist’s studio. From this initial moment, the piece was packaged and sent to be exhibited in an art gallery, then in the context of an art fair, a museum, the house of a collector, and finally, in a former church.

In Timisoara, Black Cloud was introduced in a long-awaited tram tour, populated by the well-known work of the Mexican artist Carlos Amorales, which becomes an implicit allusion to this rich history of local rail transport and creates an arc over time between the first attempts and the modernity of the current railway. The history of the tramway as a means of transport in Timișoara dates back to the 19th century. In 1868, Societatea de Tramway cu Cale Ferată din Timișoara, the future Societatea de Transport Timișoara, was inaugurated, and the first horse-drawn tram line came into operation between the current local Northern Station and the city centre.

Meanwhile, in Bucharest, the piece was installed in the National Museum of Contemporary Art, by using the entirety of the rooms, both in the public and private areas, without making distinctions, adjusting to the architectural conditions like here in the Marble Room situated in the former People’s House, the headquarters of an oppressive regime. Not only is the Black Cloud the materialization of a dreamt phantasma and myth spreading across the globe, like the story of Ganda and its depiction by Dürer.

As a satellite of the Art Encounters Biennial in Timișoara, where the Black Cloud has occupied a tram, now touring the town, it is also a sublime manifestation of monstrosities. Far more extensive than we humans can grasp with any of our senses and sciences, it is in this hauntological dimension that art becomes scaringly real fiction. Exhibition is opened in Bucharest up until October 1, 2023, details here.

Photos courtesy of Art Encounters

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