[spectre] Biennale Matter of Art 2022 (Prague/CZ, 21.7.-23.10.2022)

[Andreas Broeckmann]

Biennale Matter of Art 2022

21 July - 23 October 2022, Prague/CZ

https://matterof.art/2022

The second edition of Biennale Matter of Art will take place from July 
21 to October 23, 2022, at the Prague City Gallery, the General 
University Hospital, and the Šaloun Studio in Prague. The exhibition and 
public program will be open to the public free of charge. The public 
opening will take place on July 20–28, 2022.
The Past That Haunts Us

The biennale will comprise newly commissioned and existing artworks, 
performances, guided tours, talks, and discussions. On the occasion of 
the biennale, tranzit.cz will publish a bilingual anthology of texts 
that will further develop the thematic anchoring of the project from 
various artistic, critical, and historical perspectives. The biennale is 
co-curated by members of the international curatorial group comprising 
Rado Ištok, Renan Laru-an, Piotr Sikora, and tranzit.cz. The second 
edition of Biennale Matter of Art in Prague explores what lies beyond 
the identity of Central and Eastern Europe as a space of in-betweenness, 
caught up between belonging to “Fortress Europe” and being Europe’s 
periphery—a postsocialist destination for capitalist adventures. Thus 
situated and aligning elsewhere, it seeks agency and collaboration while 
attempting to decode complicated relations between gender, race, social 
and economic status, sexuality, and geopolitics. The biennale will 
examine the lives of power in vulnerability and resilience. It will 
understand the violence of the present conditions in historical traumas 
and will offer languages from contemporary art and visual culture that 
process, narrate, or hold trauma in order to better understand how the 
past haunts us still. Biennale Matter of Art 2022 imagines alternative 
futures by grasping strength in relationships that may be 
intergenerational, transitional, incipient, or even weak. It will 
incorporate the “minor” perspectives of children, enthusiasts, kidults, 
and introverts as well as the “poor” experiences of the chronically ill, 
prematurely deceased, or monstrous as agents who act, create, and 
deliberate meanings.