Laila Tara H in dialogue with Monir Sharhoudy Farmanfarmaian at Hatch Gallery

2nd Edition of the Biennale of Contemporary Keramics: Where the Day Starts
Works of contemporary ceramics by 42 artists from 18 countries engage in dialogue with the historical and archaeological landscape of Rhodes, unfolding  across the Medieval City and highlighting the enduring relationship between material, light, and culture.  

Through the thematic axis of the Sun, the Biennale of Contemporary Keramics proposes a contemporary reading of the Mediterranean as a place of memory, encounter and creation. 

Etel Adnan, Myrsini Alexandridi, Darien Arikoski-Johnson, Elysia Athanatos, Leonardo Bartolini, Elina Belou, Emmanouil Bonis, Robert Brambora, Jorge Cabieses-Valdes, Meriem Chabani / Gorbon Ceramics, Chous Ceramics, Katya Desnenko, Mauro Fariñas, Malek Gnaoui, Kyriaki Goni, Luke Edward Hall, Dionisis Kavallieratos, Lynn Kodeih, Tülay Kulbay, Vassiliki Kyriaki, Anne Kwasner, Lucile Littot, Lillian Lykiardopoulou, Atalanti Martinou, Fatima Mohisen, Asunción Molinos Gordo, Kostas Neofytou, Ben Wolf Noam, Menandros Papadopoulos, Zoë Paul, GianMarco Porru, Myrsini Roumelioti, David Scanavino, Terpsichore Savvala, Ayla Tavares, Natalia Triantafylli, Alban Turquois, Lucille Uhlrich, Elif Uras, Giorgos Vavatsis, Vuslat, Zoe Williams

For these 22 artists, materials operate as vital forces in the creation process. Their works are informed by ancestral practices and challenge common assumptions about the world. Stones, avocados, volcanic rock, cacao, achiote, clay and mineral pigments both perform art and behave artistically. Several Eternities in a Day considers ideas around materials as records of the living and repositories of cosmic memory, Brownness and cosmopolitan Indigeneity. Refusing to speak from an ethnographic distance, the exhibition and its catalog instead propose an approach based on permeability.

Artists include: Jackie Amézquita, Carmen Argote, Gabriel Chaile, Naomi Gamarra, Raven Halfmoon, Rose B. Simpson, Ayla Tavares, Gustavo Caboco, Patricia Domínguez Claro, Sky Hopinka, Santiago Yahuarcani, Raven Chacon.

Several Eternities in a Day: Form in the Age of Living Materials features twenty-two artists from North, Central, and South America who embrace the unpredictable nature of living materials. These artists use materials such as avocado, cacao, achiote, cochineal, stone, clay, and natural dyes to create large-scale installations, paintings, works on paper, and mixed-media sculpture. Each of these materials is alive—they evolve, decay, drip, crumble, and evaporate. They are rooted in the spirit, memory, and knowledge of Brown and Indigenous worlds. The exhibition considers ideas around materials as records of the living and repositories of cosmic memory, organic decay and transformation.

They are the shadow of something that has lost its body, yet keep knocking at the night of the mind They are a memory that refuses to become past, a fear dressed as mystery, a presence made of absence. They dwell in the corridors of silence, live in the cracks of memory, and feed on what was left unsaid. At times they make us tremble; at others they shield us into forgetting.

Ayla Tavares and Beatrice Modisett tackle time divergently.  

Modisett’s recent work on display mines campfires to take form. Salvaged from the dead fires of camping excursions outside the city, these remnants yield sooty, painting-like works, the compositions framed by blackened, bunched-up sticks of wood. Within, wonderfully crude charcoal marks on pigment-covered paper surfaces render abstract forms. Modisett carefully collects debris from each trip to incorporate into her compositions. There’s a simultaneous evocation of the protective fire and the dead, cool air that later surrounds the black remains in the morning light the day after a blaze fulfilled its task. Here, time is quick; after the fire is set, it is gone.

A fascinating exploration of how artists are using traditional textile techniques to tell modern, global stories.

Exhibition organised by Fundación MAPFRE in collaboration with Carré d’Art, Nîmes Museum of Contemporary Art.

Colombian photographer Felipe Romero Beltrán presents Bravo, a visual narrative centered on the Rio Bravo, a territory marked by migration and identity tensions. Through portraits, interiors, and landscapes, he explores spaces of waiting, suspended bodies, and the social realities of a border.

MEN with Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, Louis Jammes, Tomasz Machciński, David Meskhi, Pierre-Élie de Pibrac, Felipe Romero Beltrán, curated by Domitille d'Orgeval.