Luleå Art Biennial 2011 - LAB11

Below you can read the introduction text written by Kilen Art Group for the 2011 biennial's paper.

Every year, hundreds of artists from all over the world apply to realize their artistic ideas in Luleå. We go through sketches, films, models, project descriptions and documents of all possible and impossible kinds, and in the end we have come up with the 25 projects that are now on display at Norrbotten's museum and Kulturens Hus in Luleå.

This year, the artworks have been selected without a predetermined theme, instead we have let the artists reflect current trends and forms of expression. The exhibition has become very much about surface and appearance - not to be confused with superficiality. In today's media-intensive society, the visual language is often simplified, but at the same time must represent all people's most complicated feelings.

For 20 years, Kilen Art Group has held international art events in Luleå. We notice with pleasure that the cultural climate in Norrbotten is constantly getting stronger and that we are now in an exciting time when very good things are happening. We are about to get a new art museum in Kiruna, a new art gallery in Tornedalen, a 3,200 square meter art museum in Boden and much else that seethes with life and inspires hope.

Over the years, we have had the pleasure of collaborating with one of the world's largest and oldest biennials, the one in Sao Paolo in Brazil. Chief curator Moacir dos Anjos has chosen the Brazilian artist Barbara Wagner, who will show photography at the Luleå Art Biennial. This year we have also started a collaboration with one of the world's youngest biennials, the one in Cameroon. Barthelemy Togou is starting up a biennial there and has invited Jan-Erik Lundström, who was the curator of the Luleå Art Biennial 2009, as a collaboration partner.

Throughout the summer, you can take part in guided tours of the exhibition every weekday at 1 p.m. at Norrbotten's museum and at 2 p.m. at Kulturens Hus, or borrow an audio guide at the reception so you can listen at your own pace. The biennial also runs this year until 14 September, which means that the exhibition will remain when schools start again in the autumn. This gives us the opportunity for an extended educational program around the exhibition. We collaborate with the educators at the museum and the art gallery, who receive groups from the schools.