Sentul Biennale: To our Friends

The Sentul Biennale is guided by a single question: what do biennales still have to offer us today?

The biennale as we know it finds itself overburdened and overdetermined by the structures by which it is propped up: diplomatic ties, corporate and state funding, unspoken art world networks and hierarchies, not to mention the impossible standard of internationally sanctioned “taste”. Amidst the institutional binds it has created for itself, we have forgotten the pleasure of the biennale as a site of unexpected encounters between artists, viewers, and contexts.

Audaciously calling itself a biennale, the Sentul Biennale gently pokes fun of the biennale as an institution and its own ambitions in the face of spatial, financial, and structural limitations—while being earnestly committed to the idea that biennales still have something to offer. In response to recent attempts to examine the foundational roles of friendship, kinship, and community in contemporary art, Sentul Biennale: To Our Friends turns its attention to the moment of introduction between friends as a point of consideration.