Les voix des fleuves Crossing the water

Artistic director: Isabelle Bertolotti
Guest curator: Alexia Fabre

Entitled Les voix des fleuves Crossing the water, the 17th edition of the Lyon Biennale invites artists to interrogate and investigate the subject of the waxing and waning relationships of human beings with one another and with their environment.

For this project, we are drawing on the natural and human geography of the region, and on the spirit of the Biennale’s new venues: Les Grandes Locos and the Cité Internationale de la Gastronomie. These and the other venues, among which macLYON has the longest-standing ties with the Biennale, are permeated by the question of relationships and of welcoming the other. These spaces embody history, diversity and the invention of communal ways of working. Their walls, which still bear the traces and experiences of the men and women who worked and lived there, conjure rituals of conviviality, ways of being and ways of making things together.

The artists will cause the distinctive voices of these places—their stories and their social characteristics—to resonate. These places of construction and repair, of care and hospitality, of attention to others, reveal as many destinies as they do forms of relationship—traditional, invented, and also hoped-for.

While otherness is sometimes a risk, we think it is a necessary risk, a chance for discovery.  It is, after all, the spice of life. Rivers convey these stories of exchanges and encounters, of rare commodities including salt, of conquests and discoveries, of dual histories where the relationship with the other can meander through twists and turns, from conflict and confrontation to convergence and confluence.  We have to hope that where we end up is in a space for debate and self-invention, among other people and with other people.

Participating artists (list in progress) 
Majd Abdel Hamid, Chantal Akerman, Iván Argote, Andrius Arutiunian, Taysir Batniji, Oliver Beer, Alix Boillot, Christian Boltanski, Michel de Broin, Pavel Büchler, Mona Cara, Malo Chapuy, Nathan Coley, Anaïs-Tohé Commaret, Clément Courgeon, Jérémie Danon, Bastien David, Jeremy Deller & Ed Hall, Hélène Delprat, Julien Discrit, Edi Dubien, Latifa Echakhch, Sylvie Fanchon, Omer Fast,  Olivia Funes Lastra, Robert Gabris, Hilary Galbreaith,  Agnès Gayraud, Ludivine Gonthier, Juliette Green, Tirdad Hashemi & Soufia Erfanian, Healthy Boy Band feat P.P., Vir Andres Hera, Chourouk Hriech, Gözde Ilkin, Victoire Inchauspé, Jesper Just, Meri Karapetyan, Ines Katamso, Nadežda Kirćanski, Lina Lapelytė, Ange Leccia, Seulgi Lee, Clara Lemercier Gemptel, Guadalupe Maravilla, Florian Mermin, Annette Messager, Myriam Mihindou, Sahil Naik, Deimantas Narkevičius, Grace Ndiritu, Bocar Niang, Jean-Christophe Norman, Matthias Odin, Nefeli Papadimouli, Jennetta Petch & Szymon Kula, Liesl Raff, Lorraine de Sagazan, Sofía Salazar Rosales, Hajar Satari, Hans Schabus, Shivay la Multiple, Anastasia Sosunova, Zuri Camille de Souza, Feda Wardak