Marking its fortieth anniversary, the seventeenth Bienal de Cuenca, titled The Sport, opened on 24 October. Its inauguration coincided with the Artwork Basel Paris honest on the opposite facet of the Atlantic, however the biennial affords a well timed counterpoint. Particularly, it highlights artists and curators from the International South, foregrounding the area’s social and political considerations over market priorities.
Set in Cuenca—certainly one of Ecuador’s largest cities, whose centre is a Unesco World Heritage Web site—the Bienal de Cuenca unfolds greater than 2,000 metres above sea degree amid the El Cajas mountain vary. Established in 1987, the biennial stays the nation’s main worldwide artwork occasion. It’s funded by the municipality of Cuenca, which allocates $500,000 per version, a few third of which covers operations and employees.
In 2023, the town’s mayor appointed Hernán Pacurucu as government director of the Cuenca Biennial Basis. Beneath his management, initiatives such because the Open Doorways programme and Artwork Kiosk have expanded public entry, circulating artwork nationwide and providing academic actions for kids and faculty teams.
Ecuador has a dynamic cultural panorama, however its contemporary-art scene stays largely unknown internationally and rarely receives international protection. New initiatives corresponding to Guayaquil’s forthcoming Eacheve Basis museum (opening in autumn 2026) and Quito Design Week are starting to boost its profile past the area.
But this renewed cultural power unfolds towards a backdrop of political volatility. The Bienal de Cuenca arrived this 12 months on the heels of the newest political rebellion by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, which was triggered by the tip of diesel subsidies and the federal government’s extractive agenda. In response to the unrest, president Daniel Noboa imposed a state of emergency in a number of provinces, limiting public gatherings and motion. The protests ended on 22 October, simply two days earlier than the biennial’s inauguration.
Carmen Vicente’s Infinite Steps Courtesy Bienal de Cuenca
Regardless of the tense nationwide local weather, the Bienal de Cuenca kicked off with an formidable curatorial mannequin that includes 17 outstanding worldwide curators. Every curator chosen three artists—not less than certainly one of whom hails from Ecuador. Works by 51 artists are displayed throughout a number of venues, together with museums, gardens, the airport, colonial convents and municipal galleries.
As political tensions subsided, the biennial opened with a ceremony that underscored the occasion’s dedication to Indigenous information and non secular reflection. The Chacruna providing, an Andean ritual honouring Pachamama (Mom Earth), was led by the Ecuadorian artist and curandera (drugs girl) Carmen Vicente. Her set up, curated by Amy Rosenblum Martín, gained this 12 months’s acquisition prize.
Vicente’s Infinite Steps is a deeply private set up that confronts the devastation wrought by Covid-19 in Ecuador, one of many earliest epicentres of the pandemic in Latin America. The solemn work is comprised of strolling sticks mounted on stone bases, every anchored by a single shoe. The handles are wrapped with multicoloured, doll-like collectible figurines affixed to steel spoons, forming a silent procession of human figures.
“I began with just a few pairs of footwear that got to me by 4 members of the family who died in the course of the pandemic,” Vicente tells The Artwork Newspaper. “And from there, extra began to hitch in.” With Indigenous communities going through practically 4 occasions the surplus loss of life price of the overall inhabitants in the course of the pandemic, the artist reworked personal mourning right into a collective memorial.
Shut-up of Darwin Guerrero’s undertaking at Bienal de Cuenca Courtesy Bienal de Cuenca
The organisers of The Sport invited its curators to be lively individuals and contemplate play as a essential software, leading to initiatives that diverse broadly in tone and execution. The curators Gerardo Mosquera (from Cuba), Virginia Roy (Spain and Mexico) and Justo Pastor Mellado (Chile) delivered a number of the biennial’s strongest and most targeted shows, partaking immediately with social, political and psychological points.
Mosquera obtained the award for Finest Curatorial Staff for his exhibition La Noche Bella no Deja Dormir (The Stunning Evening Retains Me Awake), which options works by the artists Sandra Cinto, Rember Yahuarcani and Christian Proaño. The present explores loss of life and the night time as websites of reflection and revelation by way of large-scale portray, sound and literature. The presentation honours the Cuban nationwide hero and author José Martí whereas reasserting human connection over capitalism’s concentrate on individualism and hyperproductivity.
Whereas Mosquera’s poetic exhibition emphasises reflection, Roy approached The Sport by way of lively engagement, creating an area for autonomy and negotiation whereas critiquing institutional management. Roy’s presentation, lo lúdico como potencia política (play as a political pressure), invitations viewers to navigate a painstakingly made labyrinth of 26,000 resin-cast crabs constructed by the Ecuadorian artist Darwin Guerrero.
Additionally featured is a video by the Belgian artist Francis Alÿs, filmed in Ecuador’s Selva Alegre as a part of his long-running exploration of kids’s video games, and a sequence of charcoal drawings embroidered in silver thread by the Argentine artist Ana Gallardo with phrases written by sicarios (youngster assassins). “In a darkish time when neoliberal hegemony is stalking the world and limiting areas for negotiation and creation, artwork can—and does—play a basic function,” Roy says.
Teo Monsalve’s set up at Bienal de Cuenca is a part of his ongoing Neotropical Futurism undertaking Courtesy Bienal de Cuenca
The theme of “enjoying lifeless” is explored by the curator Justo Pastor Mellado and the artists Manuela Ribadeneira, Oswaldo Ruiz and Francisca Aninat in a presentation on the Sixteenth-century Convento de las Conceptas. The London-based Ribadeneira guides the viewer by way of a sequence of areas: a monastic cell, a walled backyard and, lastly, a mausoleum—encapsulating the concept of thresholds and liminal states of consciousness. Beneath their associations with purity and transcendence, the scent of backyard lilies accommodates the identical compound launched by a decomposing physique, linking the rigidity of cloistered life with the rituals of loss of life.
Different notable installations embody that of the Quito-based artist Pamela Suasti, who explores methods of energy and surveillance in collaboration with the Dominican-born curator Ezequiel Taveras. Suasti obtained the Paris Prize, a three-month residency in France, for Archive of a Gesture—a undertaking that comes with salvaged workplace paperwork the artist describes as “discarded materials, a report, one thing official, printed, saved for years in bins and bins, later deserted and rendered out of date, although as soon as so necessary”. By hand-moulding crumpled paperwork with a closed fist, Suasti transforms bureaucratic waste right into a tactile archive of defiance and resistance.
In distinction, the Ecuadorian artist Teo Monsalve and the Colombian curator Santiago Rueda look outward, adopting a futuristic science-fiction lens to discover mestizaje (cultural hybridity) throughout time. Monsalve’s multi-layered set up, a part of his ongoing Neotropical Futurism undertaking, appears to be like on the shared mythology and ecology linking cultures from Mexico to the southern Amazon. Utilizing regionally sourced copper, Monsalve reveals how conventional supplies and symbols retain that means within the digital age, imagining change throughout the area as a continuum between the previous, current and visionary futures.
Whereas the general high quality of the work is powerful at this 12 months’s Bienal de Cuenca, the dearth of organisation, absence of maps and outdated web site make navigating it an precise “sport” for guests. For a lot of artists, opening weekend was a missed alternative to share their initiatives with influential curators, reduce brief because the 17 curators have been taken to the town of Loja for a convention. A number of artists stated that, after per week of set up, they’d hoped for extra significant interactions; as an alternative, the curators scarcely had time to see accomplished works in situ. Hopefully within the subsequent version each artists and attendees on the opening will be capable of use the time for essential dialogue.
Bienal de Cuenca: The Sport, a number of areas in Cuenca, Ecuador, till 1 February 2026
