This month, through April 30, 2009, the city of Havana, Cuba will become an international art gallery and a focal point of contemporary art debate, hosting its 10th International Havana Biennial. The Biennial, which this year celebrates its 25th anniversary, will include exhibitions, conferences and panel discussions around the theme Integration and Resistance in the Global Era, with exhibitions and debates focusing on issues of globalization. More than 200 artists, creators and art critics from 44 countries are attending, making the city of Havana a center for debate and reflection on the challenges and issues facing contemporary art.
The program of the Havana Biennial is extensive, including many personal projects, solo and group exhibitions, workshops and panel discussions. The panel discussions will be asking questions such as: how do we manage the integration of a highly complex world? How do we resist the hegemonic trends to homogenize culture? How are the identities of the people of Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the many other countries of the world preserved? Without pretending to offer solutions or answers to a reality that day after day reveals the complexity of its structure, the Havana Biennial seeks to reflect on this modern phenomenon of globalization versus individual identity, which at the base of the debate on the identity of individuals, groups, communities, countries and regions.
Projects and works from Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and to a lesser extent from North America, Europe and Australia will examine the challenges of integration into a global, highly complex world, while preserving the peculiarities of different cultures, their ideas and forms. Once more, the colonial buildings of the Historical Center of Havana and other cultural spaces will gain new significance for visitors, as the city becomes a meeting point of multidisciplinary and experimental proposals in the visual arts. The tenth edition will be a favorable occasion to stimulate the reflection on the history of the Havana Biennials and the premises on which, in a genuine atmosphere of collaboration, it was first convoked twenty-five years ago.
