The Second Yinchuan Biennale: Starting from the Desert. Ecologies on the Edge

MOCA Yinchuan is pleased to announce the international presentation of the Second Yinchuan Biennale, which will take place from June 9 to September 19, 2018 under the artistic directorship of Marco Scotini.

On December 12 2017, in Milan, in the FM Centre for Contemporary Art venue, Suchen Hsieh (Artistic Director of MOCA Yinchuan) together with Marco Scotini (Artistic Director of FM and Head of Visual Arts-NABA) and Edoardo Bonaspetti (Director of Mousse Agency and Editor-in-Chief of Mousse Magazine), will present a preview of the title, concept and visual identity of the upcoming Biennale.

The Biennale will be staged not only along the 15,000 square meters of the contemporary art museum, but will also exploit the Hui Nongqu Eco-Park and the International Artists Village. The MOCA Yinchuan, located within a major organic plantation, is the first contemporary art museum in North-Western China.

It’s the artistic director of MOCA, Suchen Hsieh, who communicates the title—Starting from the Desert. Ecologies on the Edge—underlining the importance of an international exhibition that comes face to face with the territorial context of the North West of China, along with its own geography and history. The framework chosen by this Biennale, despite being based on investigations and themes rooted in local reality, intends to address urgent issues (environmental, social and cultural) not only for China but across the globe.     

As Marco Scotini states: “It is always said that the desert only has a geography but not a history. Perhaps because the desert wipes out traces and does not maintain signs of orientation or direction. However, the task of this Biennale is to unearth historical memories and uncover potential reserves with a view to optimizing environmental sustainability. Here, below the Gobi Desert and above the Yellow River, at the foot of the Helashan Mountain, the routes were once those of the Silk Road. Here, where the desert ends amid the countryside, diverse eco-systems encountered one another and stratified, serving as guarantors of biodiversity. The nomadic and the stationary, shepherds and farmers, minorities of various origins, smooth spaces and striated fields, immaterial and material cultures. This Biennale is also an occasion in which art meets the extra-disciplinary. Last but not least, the question to ask is why Félix Guattari set out from nomadology and ended up at ecosophy?”

Within the Biennale, much space will be given over to the issue of ecology and agriculture, another to that of alternative education and the book as paradigm; and yet another still to the coexistence of minorities, to name but a few. There will be many specially commissioned works on display, together with chinese cultural relics and artefacts from different historical contexts.

In keeping with the concept proposed by the curator, the coordinated image and the publishing projects linked to the event—developed with Mousse Agency & Publishing—revolve around the desert and its topographies: tangible yet in continuous movement, impermanent.