Biennale Matter of Art 2024

The Biennale Matter of Art was founded in 2020 to explore whether and how it is possible to do larger-scale exhibition projects as political and institutional interventions. The first two editions, held in 2020 and 2022, helped to establish the biennale as a space for voices and perspectives that are not often present or go unnoticed in the mainstream public discourse, even though they can offer lessons in resilience and solidarity. The biennale continues this line in the current edition, foregrounding acts of resistance as resources for hope.

The two curators, Katalin Erdődi and Aleksei Borisionok, graft their interests in rural change as social change and the legacies and futures of workers’ movements  in order to focus on forgotten stories of social unrest and underrepresented micro-histories of sociopolitical transformation in Central and Eastern Europe and beyond. Bringing together diverse artistic contributions and discursive interventions, the curators look for the resonances between historical struggles and the contemporary moment. Working through the notion of grafting – taken from agriculture and medicine – Matter of Art creates connections between social movements across the changing contexts of the rural and the urban, attending to how the notion of work and the worker finds new meanings.

The biennale is a part of the project Art Space Unlimited, which is co-funded by the European Union. The artistic and curatorial residencies and public program are funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU.