The Art Newspaper

Hou Hanru unveils tenth Lyon Biennale

Chinese curator focuses on alienating effects of cities

By Georgina Adam. Web only
Published online: 21 September 2009

lyon. On 14 September, Hou Hanru unveiled the tenth edition of the Lyon Biennale, held in France’s second largest city. Hanru took charge when the French curator Catherine David unexpectedly pulled out of the event in March.

The biennale’s theme, “The Spectacle of the Everyday”, allows China-born Hanru to revisit his interest in the alienating effects of cities, best exemplified by Lin Yilin’s film One Day, 2006-09, showing the artist walking around the Champs-Elysées with one wrist handcuffed to his ankle, to the indifference of tourists and passers-by. Barry McGee’s Installation, 2009, depicts a rundown urban environment, with a series of upended, graffiti-sprayed vans while a tagger, perched on the shoulders of two friends, spraypaints the walls. Dan Perjovschi contributes wall paintings around the venues, while the veteran film-maker Agnès Varda has built a series of huts, including one containing portraits of 30 men and women who live and work on the French island of Noirmoutier.

At the Bullukian Foundation in Lyon’s central Place Bellecour, politics meets art with a series of drawings by Laura Genz. She documents the ongoing struggle for the “sans papiers” (undocumented immigrants) to obtain residence rights in France.

The biennale is spread across four locations, the largest of which is La Sucrière, a sugar warehouse close to the confluence of the Rhône and Saône rivers. The other locations are the Museum of Contemporary Art, whose director Thierry Raspail is artistic director of the biennale, a local foundation and a decaying warehouse, while regional museums have put on special exhibitions. The biennale continues until 3 January.