The Lyon Biennale stems from a project by the Lyon’s Museum of Contemporary Art, directed by Thierry Raspail in 1984. Following the Paris Biennale’s closure in 1985 the Biennale proceeded by an annual event from 1984 – 1988 entitled October of the Arts. This event gave rise to the Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art in 1991, which was inaugurated by the City of Lyon and the Ministry of Culture within the framework of decentralization, aiming to move the French Biennale of Contemporary Art outside Paris. Since 1991 the Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art has been financed in equal parts by the City of Lyon and the French Ministry of Culture.///

Human relations will be at the heart of the 17th Lyon Biennale -the contemporary issues that underlie them, their many facets, their scope and their rituals- in order to explore and extend hospitality practices.

Artistic director: Isabelle Bertolotti
Guest curator: Alexia Fabre

Artists from multiple backgrounds, and at different points in their career, are being invited to offer their interpretation and vision of relations—ways of being choral, singular and plural all at once. In a present where respect for difference, contradictory ideas and debate are at stake, dialogue has become a relational and existential issue. It now seems vital, by combining artistic practices, to consider the different ways of revisiting the authority and silences of history with a view to polyphonic expression, attentiveness to and respect for others, and private or collective repair.

In a desire to collaborate and to expand the creative process, the artists are inviting audiences to take part in their works: they are creating for, but also with, everyone. In featuring existing works as well as inviting artists to make new ones, the Lyon Biennale wishes to open up a spacetime for thinking that can yield shared, vibrant experiences. The event, which has long championed creators, also sees itself as a moment in time for reflecting together on the role artists play, and the power they have, to reveal the world and intervene in it.