Viss reizē zied denly it all blossoms
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20 August –
13 September 2020 Press Highlights
Curated by Rebecca
Lamarche-Vadel
rigabiennial.com
viss reizē zied
и вдруг все расцвело
and suddenly
suddenly it all blossoms
3 September 2020 The Art Newspaper Tom Seymour Riboca2 shows the fragility of our world, and our vulnerability within it. Like dominos, virtually every art biennial scheduled to take place over 2020 was cancelled. But Riboca2 decided to forge ahead. Reimagining the format has required us to be flexible, open and united, Mirgorodskaya says. Qualities which may be required from us all in the future. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/analysis/ as-crowds-are-banned-riga-s-art-biennial- transforms-into-a-three-week-live-set-for-a- feature-film
18 August 2020 FINANCIAL TIMES Jackie Wullschläger Like all meaningful biennials, including Venice, RIBOCA is inherently, gorgeously, an architectural proposition: the draw is fleeting installations in conversation with iconic buildings, unique landscapes. Mourning and cosmic dreams, renewal from ruins, a different ecology: this newcomer among biennials punches above its weight, impressively demonstrating the power of the regional to illuminate the global. https://www.ft.com/content/1dd7f9f1-6ff6- 468f-b7c4-08c821531152
7 October 2020
ART AGENDA
Novuyo Moyo
If you can’t beat it, as the If the biennial presents a fantasy
saying goes, incorporate it into of existing as an enchanted
your curatorial concept. After bubble, a space outside the
initially postponing the second world, this rare insight into the
edition of the Riga International conditions of its production only
Biennial of Contemporary Art reinforces the reality in which
(RIBOCA), the curatorial team a show of this magnitude is
led by Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel embedded.
elected to embrace Covid-19,
acknowledging the virus as https://www.art-agenda.com/
features/347551/2nd-riga-international-
a “significant author” of the biennial-of-contemporary-art-and-suddenly-
exhibition. Change is the only it-all-blossoms
constant and every end—for the
curators, if not for the artists
who weren’t able to show their
works as initially intended—a
potential beginning.
24 August 2020
Artnet
Hili Person
The second edition of the Riga cancelations and dashed plans. But it never snowed in Latvia pandemic brought it all into
Biennial of Art is one of the lone The biennial finally opened to due to record-high temperatures focus: Covid-19 may be an
events to draw the art world out the public in a much reduced that hit Europe this year, agitator, but the old world was
of hiding this summer. and altered format on August and so Serapinas’s legion already slipping away. It’s high
20, with members of the art of Mudmen—a multitude of time to imagine a new one.
The young biennial, once a stop world gathering at a defunct bulbous stacks of mud and
along what would have been and dilapidated industrial site hay—stand in their place. It’s https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/
a clogged art calendar, now by Riga’s port. an important reminder of what riga-biennial-2-2020-1903626?fbclid
=IwAR3ffw6eBY0H9XZG0HaWvFGf-
stands out as one of the lone Lamarche-Vadel was already fUiejaJqRYA2LJS6ABpn_Ze6ISsApVI_10#.
events to take place in a year of chipping away at before the X0Sl4HX4XIA.twitter
26 August 2020
Wallpaper
Louise Long
‘And suddenly it all blossoms’, RIBOCA’s second edition is its evolution – noting absent and ensuing ‘re-enchantment’ of
the exhibition title rings clear: steering visitors on an altered artworks, celebrating its own fragility.
out. A cry of celebration ‘odyssey’ of ‘enchantment’ in silence as much as noise. Part
and optimism – just not in the face of ‘coming cataclysm’. biennial, part memorial. https://www.wallpaper.com/art/riboca-
riga-biennial-contemporary-art-2020?utm_
time for spring, as originally An exhibition de catastrophe, medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fb-
planned. And whilst the ‘it’ is taking in its stride both the And triumph RIBOCA2 has. clid=IwAR1i7LoS3vnJ_pvHPyAKu0AKCtjaX-
OHWdpEBRoRsnlEdVTr7jqgpaL0e8hU#Echo-
undefined, curator Rebecca turbulence of the setting and the Perhaps most meaningfully
box=1598478764
Lamarche-Vadel’s vision for times. Opting to leave traces of of all, in the acceptance and
3 September 2020
Calvert Journal
Elise Morton
Although Lamarche-Vadel’s words was evidenced from the off
speak to our current, somewhat by the diversity of RIBOCA2’s
apocalyptic context, the Biennial “participants”.
seemed to have been conceived
with the end of the world already Rather than taking the pandemic
in mind. With its original curatorial as a sign of Armageddon and
theme of “re-enchantment”, giving up the artistic ghost, the
RIBOCA2 was always intended to Biennial has — imperfectly, but
be a reflection on an impending admirably — resolved to adapt,
cataclysm, the need to rethink reinvent itself, and seek the new
our relationships with other possibilities and visions that might
beings (be they animals, or be “unveiled” by this crisis.
even extra-terrestrials), and the
consequent imperative to make https://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/
show/12109/riga-art-biennial-pandemic-covid-19
room for alternative voices and
visions. Such an undertakingReturn of the large format
exhibition after digital dwarfism:
the Riga Biennial vacillates
24 August 2020 between madness, courage and
boldness. It is a signal for the
Frankfurter art world.
Allgemeine Zeitung https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/
Werner Bloch kunst/was-besucher-der-biennale-in-riga-
erwartet-16917530.html?GEPC=s37 January 2020
Galerie
Paul Laster
Following its critically times. And considering that 85
acclaimed first iteration, the percent of the projects will be
Riga International Biennial of new commissions, produced
Contemporary Art (May 16– in close relationship with local
October 11) is back with the communities, this biennial
exhibition “and suddenly it offers a chance to experience
all blossoms,” which takes the new while learning about
the notion of re-enchantment the past in the Baltic’s biggest
as a point of departure for metropolis, where the historical
understanding the present and city center is a UNESCO World
a path to planning a better Heritage Site.
future. Borrowing its title
from the Latvian poet Māra https://www.galeriemagazine.com/10-
buzzworthy-art-cities-visit-2020/
Zālīte, the exhibition takes its
inspiration from the history
of Riga, Latvia, and the Baltic
States, which have been
occupied and drawn into other
people’s conflicts countlessGamely playing Tarkovsky’s It couldn’t be a better place for Tarkovsky’s Stalker, the setting
Stalker, Lamarche-Vadel a Covid biennial, we all agreed presented viewers with objects
guided us through this strange, as we walked to a piece sparsely of obscure origin and period.
1 September 2020
deserted site, proving that the installed around Riga’s former
straightest path is not always harbor. No violation of six- https://www.artforum.com/diary/neringa-
ARTFORUM the shortest. feet distancing rules could be
cerniauskaite-on-the-second-riga-biennial-
83868?fbclid=IwAR1PwouDlvg0uQOngjEL-F_
Neringa Černiauskaitė imagined here. Like The Zone in T3KWyGOdyrvzYij-H75E1EhahDvOV08wKFq41 September 2020
ARTERRITORY
Helmuts Caune
Thanks to the miraculous fact But what is, in my opinion,
that the second edition of the really fresh (or, on the contrary,
Riga International Biennial of a return to something old and
Contemporary Art (RIBOCA), forgotten) about RIBOCA2 is
titled and suddenly it all how it is experienced through
blossoms, is actually taking the senses and not the mind.
place, the public has the chance
to experience this unusual The form in which, despite
territory from new viewpoints everything, RIBOCA2 has
and perspectives for at least managed to materialise in
three weeks. Andrejsala, hides within it many
opportunities to be inspired by
The biennial is clearly not ways in which we can adapt
embarrassed by this weakness to ‘the new normal’. Again,
and humbly accepts it as evi- largely because it is more of an
denced by, among other things, adventure than a lesson.
leaving the original written
plans for the missing works (but https://arterritory.com/en/visual_arts/
reviews/25109-compulsory_blessing
crossed out) in the annotations
and textual materials.28 August 2020
APOLLO MAGAZINE
Elise Morton
A re-evaluation of our position Serapinas, hailing from
and values – and, indeed, neighbouring Lithuania, believes
the question of who gets to that RIBOCA has given a ‘boost
take part in a contemporary to the local art scene and artists
art biennial – was from the from the wider Baltic region’;
off echoed in the diversity of the Biennial’s reinvention will
RIBOCA2’s ‘participants’, a term doubtless provide an equally
intended to acknowledge that valuable education in what it
not all those with work in the means to ‘pivot’ (one of the
biennial identify as artists. principal watchwords of this
pandemic) as an arts institution.
The true test of RIBOCA2’s
commitment to openness and https://www.apollo-magazine.com/riga-
biennial-2020-review/
adaptability, in many ways,
was the arrival of the Covid-19
pandemic.THE RUSSIAN ART FOCUS
Grigory Nekhoroshev
Riga, however, is now aiming event’s French curator, Rebecca Andrew). A power plant and was gradually evicted from the
high. Its goal is to include Lamarche-Vadel, managed to port elevators were built there city centre, hence the Biennale’s
Latvia and other Baltic region take over an entire island in the in the mid-19th century. In move to its brutal architecture.
countries “in the global art centre of Riga, if only for three Soviet times, it hosted the huge,
context” of contemporary weeks. (The island of Andrejsala concrete warehouses of Riga’s https://russianartfocus.com/issue22/riboca-
an-island-of-art-by-the-shores-of-baltic/
art. Mirgorodskaya and the was named after the Apostle commercial port, but the portContact us +371 6768 7714 hello@rigabiennial.com Office address: Ausekļa iela 2-2, Rīga, LV-1010, Latvia Join the conversation on social media @RigaBiennial on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter #RIBOCAtalks #RigaBiennial #RIBOCA2
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