The Embassy of the North Sea is participating in the 23rd Biennale of Sydney, together with artist Xandra van der Eijk (1985) The title of this major international contemporary art event, which will be open to the public from 12 March to 13 June 2022, is rīvus, meaning ‘stream’ in Latin.
Situated along the waterways of the Gadigal and Burramattagal people, the Biennale of Sydney in 2022 will be articulated through a series of conceptual wetlands and imagined ecosystems populated by artworks, public programs, experiments, research and activisms, following the currents of meandering tributaries that expand into a delta of interrelated ideas.
The Biennale of Sydney 2022 is curated by artistic director José Roca (Colombia) and a team of local curators: the Curatorium. The Curatorium speaks of waterways as dynamic living systems with varying degrees of political agency. ‘’Indigenous knowledge has long understood non-human entities as living ancestral beings with a right to life that must be protected. But only recently have some plants, mountains and bodies of water been granted legal personhood. If we can recognise that a river has a voice, what might they say?’’ rīvus will enable aqueous beings – rivers, wetlands and other salt and freshwater ecosystems – to share a dialogue with artists, architects, designers, scientists, and communities.
