FotoFest 2016 Biennial
CHANGING CIRCUMSTANCES: Looking at the Future of the Planet
March 12–April 24, 2016
Houston, Texas
USA
FotoFest International, and its new Executive Director, Steven Evans, announce the theme and dates for the FotoFest 2016 Biennial. Mr. Evans, with FotoFest Co-founders Frederick Baldwin and Wendy Watriss, will curate the central exhibitions for the 2016 Biennial, titled CHANGING CIRCUMSTANCES: Looking at the Future of the Planet.
The FotoFest 2016 Biennial, the Sixteenth International Biennial of Photography and Photo-related Arts, takes place March 12 to April 24, 2016, in Houston, Texas. The FotoFest Biennials draw over 250,000 visitors during the course of their six-week run. They attract visitors and participants from over 35 countries. They are one of the world’s longest-running, largest, and most respected international photographic art events.
Across the globe, millions of people are acting on the crises affecting the sustainability of life as we know it on this planet. As an estimated 400,000 people recently participated in international demonstrations concerning the issues of environmental change, thousands of others are responding, with small and large projects, to the challenges of protecting, preserving and developing the resources of the planet in sustainable ways.
How is art playing a role in these processes of change? How are artists addressing the issues of global change as they affect the planet?
No other species in the history of the planet has affected global change with such dramatic speed and breadth than our own. Since the dawn of the Industrial Age, the speed of change has increased at break-neck pace, growing exponentially over the past 100 years. As the global population of human beings has tripled over the last century, its demands have put unprecedented pressure on the resources necessary to sustain human life on the planet. Human society has shaped the environment to its own needs without a clear understanding of its impact on the earth.
CHANGING CIRCUMSTANCES will present artists, experts, scientists, writers, and policy makers looking at the interconnected issues of climate change, population growth and migration, globalized use of natural resources, capital, and the impact of new technologies. The exhibitions and other programs will focus on the future of the Earth by examining challenges, and by proposing new ideas and solutions.
“We are addressing the challenges we face as inhabitants of a swiftly changing Earth,” says Mr. Evans, who joined FotoFest in February 2014. “We are exploring the intersections of science and art, of new technologies and new realities.”
In developing the programs for the 16th Biennial, the 2016 Curatorial Team is looking at projects and consulting with a range of international artists, scientists, media experts, corporate entrepreneurs, military analysts and government policymakers.
“There are paradigm shifts in the ways people interact with and understand the environment and the natural world,” says Wendy Watriss. “What role are artists and other creative thinkers playing relative to these changes? How are they addressing the way we visualize the world, these changes and a new future?”
CHANGING CIRCUMSTANCES: Looking at the Future of The Planet will include exhibitions at multiple venues; conferences, forums, and panel discussions; commissioned projects; a film program; a performing arts program; and artist workshops. FotoFest is planning a hardcover book to accompany the exhibitions.
FotoFest has a long history of commissioning new artwork addressing environmental, cultural and political issues. For the FotoFest 1994 Biennial, among three main themes, FotoFest presented The Global Environment with works by 25 US and international artists in a three-part presentation of photography, sculpture, a newly commissioned three-dimensional installation of globes, and six-station computer program, The Earth Forum, which became a study center at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. In 2004, the FotoFest Biennial focused on water, Celebrating Water: Looking at the Global Crisis, with newly commissioned international artworks and a global conference on water in partnership with Rice University. For the 2006 Biennial, one of FotoFest’s main themes was The Earth, featuring a new multi-media installation by Doug and Mike Starn, among works by other artists.
Additional Biennial programs
The 2016 exhibitions will be accompanied by the non-thematic biennial Discoveries of the Meeting Place exhibition, the Meeting Place portfolio review for artists, and FotoFest’s International Fine Print Auction. Over 100 independent museums, art galleries, non-profit art centers and corporate spaces will participate in the FotoFest 2016 Biennial by presenting photography and photography events during the festival’s six weeks.
FotoFest 2016 Biennial sponsors Early supporters of the FotoFest 2016 Biennial are the FotoFest Board of Directors, the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, Houston Endowment, Inc., The Wortham Foundation and Texas Commission on the Arts.
For further questions, please contact:
Vinod Hopson, FotoFest Press Coordinator
T +1 713 223 5522 ext 26 / vhopson [at] fotofest.org
