Aude Christel Mgba and Bruno Alves de Almeida have been appointed Artistic Directors for Luleåbiennalen 2024

Mgba and Alves de Almeida have collaborated since 2018 when they took part in the De Appel Curatorial Programme 2018-19 in Amsterdam. They share a profound interest and experience in working beyond the exhibition space and in diverse public spaces. The review panel considered the duo as curators who will bring new perspectives to questions that are currently shaping the region. Furthermore, their previous projects demonstrated innovative ways of approaching the site-specific and transdisciplinary, while connecting the local with the global.

Aude Christel Mgba (b.1991, Cameroon) is an independent curator and art historian based between Cameroon and the Netherlands. Aude engages with decoloniality through research projects and the creation of platforms that aim to transcribe, translate, and embody ancestral knowledge. Her curatorial experiences include collaborations that question forms of making and showing art which tend to be centered between art institutions and art workers. She is more interested in collaborations that expand beyond these spaces to embrace other communities.

Bruno Alves de Almeida (b.1987, Brazil / Portugal) is a curator and architect based in the Netherlands, currently active as curator of the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, and tutor at the Design Academy Eindhoven. His practice is rooted in transdisciplinary thinking and site/context-specificity, resulting in projects responding to timely issues and going beyond customary formats and spaces for the presentation and experience of artistic practice.

Mgba and Alves de Almeida will be the first Artistic Directors in the biennial history based outside of Sweden.

Luleåbiennalen 2024 with the overarching theme architecture and art, takes place between March 2–May 26 and will thereby span over the period when the most dramatic shift in the North Bothnian landscape occurs – going from covered in ice and snow to bare ground. The conditions have been explored in earlier editions of the biennial by alternating between summer and winter exhibition periods, but never in a single biennial. The shift seems particularly important for a biennial that deals with the relationship between architecture and contemporary art, highlighting related aspects of social life in both the public sphere and the home.

Crossing-over art, architecture and the region’s situated and ancestral knowledges, we imagine Luleåbiennalen 2024 as a test-bed for such alternatives emerging from transient grounds.

Jury

The review panel who evaluated the applications to to open call for Artistic Director for Luleåbiennalen 2024 consisted of:

Kieran Long, director ArkDes
Bella Rune, artist
Katya García-Antón, director Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum
Thomas Hämén, artist
Maria Ragnestam, director Konstfrämjandet Norrbotten

Luleåbiennalen 2024 with the overarching theme 'contemporary art and architecture' takes place in Norrbotten, Sweden, March 2-May 26 2024.