The Biennale of Sydney has unveiled the full list of artists who will participate in its 25th edition later this year. Titled “Rememory,” the biennale will take place from March 14th through June 14th in exhibition sites across greater Sydney, featuring work by 83 artists, collectives, and collaborations from 37 countries. This iteration is organized by esteemed curator Hoor Al-Qasimi, president and director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, who in recent years has topped the ArtReview’s Power 100 list of most influential leaders across the art world. She is the first Arab to curate the Biennale of Sydney, and the first woman to do so since 2018.
Al-Qasimi’s edition takes its title from Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel Beloved and invites its artists to reflect on their roots and reconsider the role that memory plays in shaping identity, history, and storytelling. “‘Rememory’ is shaped by artists and cultural practitioners who understand memory as something living—where history informs the present and repeats itself in different forms. Through their practices, histories that have been fragmented, erased or suppressed are revisited and reassembled, not as linear accounts but as shared and evolving acts of remembering,” said Al-Qasimi. “Drawing on personal, familial and collective experiences, the artists in this edition reveal how the past remains present, inviting audiences to engage actively with memory as a space of responsibility, reflection and possibility.”
In partnership with the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, the biennale has commissioned new work from 15 marginalized and Indigenous artists from First Nations communities across Australia and beyond, including Ángel Poyón, Angélica Serech, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Carmen Glynn-Braun, Edgar Calel, Fernando Poyón, Frank Young & The Kulata Tjuta Project, Gabriel Chaile, Gunybi Ganambarr, John Harvey & Walter Waia, John Prince Siddon, Nancy Yukuwal McDinny, Rose B. Simpson, Tania Willard, and Warraba Weatherall. These artists will realize their works with help from the Fondation Cartier’s First Nations curatorial fellow Bruce Johnson McLean, who comes from the Aboriginal Weirdi tribe.
The 25th edition of the Biennale of Sydney is the largest art initiative in Australia and will be free to the public. This year expands its reach farther across greater Sydney with large-scale installations and site-specific projects taking place across five exhibition sites that include the White Bay Power Station, Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney, Campbelltown Arts Centre, and Lewers: Penrith Regional Gallery. Exhibiting artists include Nikesha Breeze, Dread Scott, Nahom Teklehaimanot, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Joe Namy, and Sandra Monterroso.
