The 13 International Biennial Wanderlust will start on the 19th of May during which the artworks of more than 30 local, regional and international artists will be exhibited. The selected pieces of art are by artists from Macedonia, Serbia, Kosovo, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, Argentina, and Turkey. On the 20th of May, the audience will be invited to view the works of this new generation of artists, which will be exhibited at the Museum of Macedonia, and on the 21st of May, the opening will take place at the Natural History Museum. The exhibition at the building that’s home to the National Hydro-meteorological Service will be open for visitors on the 22nd of May at 13:00. The Biennial is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje. It is a multidisciplinary event and thus one of the most important contemporary art events, primarily because its objective is to find ways to create the necessary space to allow and present the latest artistic movements for the next generation of artists and curators.

 

The artworks of the following artists will be exhibited: Darko Aleksovski, Stefan Ancevski and Ana Jovanovska, Martin Volman, Sali Ertunc, Filip Ivanovski Pepe, Metodi Iskov, Jovan Josifovski, Sonja Jo, Ana Jovanovska, Resul Kaboglu, Nikola Kekerovic, Ana Lazarevska, Niccolò Masini, Julija Manojlovska, Ivana Mircevska, Ana Markovska, Natasha Nedelkova, Dorotej Neshovski, Mila Panic, Kristina Pulejkova, Nikola Radosavljevic, Driton Selmani, Dushan Stefanovski, Bojan Stojcic, Milica Lazarevic Spirovski, Ivana Samandova, Ana Trajkovska, Újházi Adrienn, Elena Chemerska, Mia Cuk and Zoran Shekerov.

 

The biennial will also spread beyond the architecture of the Museum of Contemporary Art, to include the institutional partnership with the Museum of Macedonia, the Natural History Museum, and the building which is home to the National Hydro-meteorological Service, grading the importance of these buildings, as examples of the contemporary architectural heritage of the City of Skopje and the potential of that heritage, that looks to the future and the unknown and calls for exploring and wandering to other spaces and times.

The biennial aims to introduce to the general public and also art experts the artworks of new artists on the local and international scene, and aims to support and inspire creative initiatives of the new generation artists and curators, and provides conditions that allow them to express themselves before the public and the development of the contemporary art scene. The youth biennial also includes an educational and discursive program, and through a series of activities will aim to recognize young artists and enable them to acquire the necessary knowledge and involve them in a process that will profile their work and help them in their future endeavors.

 

/ˈwɒndəlʌst/ means to wander aimlessly from place to place. If we step aside from the purpose of our travel, be it tourism or business, then we can see that a pure form of movement is all that remains, as a fundamental function of life and energy. Under the pressures of life as fixed subjects of capitalism, we are forced to produce a value that is expendable. To use this energy without purpose is to live with a disregard of this systemic driving force, to not follow the logic of capital. Subsequently, we rarely have a desire for wandering, in this situation today.

 

The creative work of art, as is its nature cannot accept this restriction, because what we value as the art will always be the act of a respite, a crack in our defined and adapted sensory system. We search for art that does not reproduce the meaning of present times. We lean towards art that hints to what our existing state of knowledge is irrevocable. We want to inspire a desire for wandering in space, inside and out, so that we can expand our wandering space, a space that is free or has been freed from the dominant code by which the individual and society are fixed and symbolized. This new space available to us without any purpose represents possibilities full of potential for novelty and art. It is precisely this short fuse between the novelty and new space which it seeks and finds the new space, /ˈwɒndəlʌst/ becomes a political movement. We have been home-bound for a year now, used to the same space, repetition while waiting. To go against this condition, our project requires “longing for something else” as a remedy that comes from aimless wandering. Longing for something else is a tremendous need to be outside our homes, physically but also through ideas.

A series of lectures and workshops are planned in the educational and discursive part of the program that will be focused on young curators and artists, as well as lectures for the young artist during which the artworks of artists who have participated at biennials in the past several years will be presented, and how they can take part in a future biennial.