Twenty locations throughout the city now host the works that are part of the Bucharest International Biennial for Contemporary Art (BB7), from downtown to various neighborhoods.  The seventh edition of the event was launched at the weekend via advertising billboards across the city, reflecting the concept of this year’s edition of the biennial, curated by Niels van Tomme.

Titled ‘What are we building down there?’, it highlights the “themes of privatization, commercialization, and corporatization of the post-socialist city within its very structure, thereby displacing the biennale onto twenty-one advertising billboards.” The chosen mode of display “holds the potential to interact with unique local contexts in ways that traditional modes of exhibition often cannot.”

It is the first edition of the event where works are not displayed in a gallery. Each work is exhibited for the first time at the biennale and  they have been adapted to the exhibition medium. The network of works spread across the city invites the public to discover the capital, more than simply experience an art exhibition, the organizers say.

“By organizing BB7 exclusively on advertising billboards, the biennale will radically and publicly appropriate Bucharest’ smoothest and most visible two-dimensional commercial surfaces. The biennale, instead of being an actor working against all-pervasive processes of commercialization, thus acts as one of many possible conduits through which to imagine novel modes of non-oppositional dissent. Working closely with the artists, it simultaneously revives an almost anachronistic mode of site-specific artistic intervention in physical space, right at the magnified and materialized outpost of our spam-infused everyday existence,” – say its organizers.

As such, the displayed works act as “artistic footnotes to the already existing city infrastructure,” allowing for new ways of navigating the city and revealing its various facets.

The twenty participating artists are: Merve Bedir (Turkey), Bors & Ritiu (Romania), Nanna Debois Buhl (Denmark), Burak Delier (Turkey), Andrea Faciu (Romania), Brendan Fernandes (Canada), Allard van Hoorn (The Netherlands), Adelita Husni-Bey (Italy), Tuomas A. Laitinen (Finland), Lehman Brothers (Denmark), Tamás Kaszás (Hungary), Metahaven (The Netherlands), Rie Nakajima (Japan), SPEEDISM (Belgium), Nasan Tur (Germany), Jaro Varga (Slovakia), Vermeir & Heiremans (Belgium), Visible Solutions LLC (Estonia), Pilvi Takala (Finland), Andrew Norman Wilson (US).

The Bucharest Biennale had its first edition in 2005, and the organizers say it has developed significantly ever since. Audience wise it went from around 5,000 visitors at the first edition to an expected 250,000 this year.

This year’s edition of the event marks the appointment of Gergő Horváth and Flavia Lupu as co-directors of the Bucharest Biennale, with Răzvan Ion and Eugen Rădescu staying on as founders.

The places where the artworks are displayed  can be located with the biennial’s iOS and Android app, which also provides further information on the works and the artists.

The Bucharest International Biennial for Contemporary Art runs until June 30th.

By Simona Fodor, Associate Editor, simona@citycompass.ro