The art will be arranged in ‘embassies of thought’
Artistic director Stephanie Rosenthal might have an intimidating high art pedigree that includes two decades of curation at Munich’s Haus der Kunst and London’s Hayward Gallery, but one of the defining aspects of her Biennale of Sydney is her desire to bring art out of the rarefied world of galleries and museums and into the everyday. In the process, she’s gone so far as to rename Sydney’s biggest art institutions. Under her curatorship, the Museum of Contemporary Art is dubbed the ‘Embassy of Translation’; the Art Gallery of NSW is ‘Embassy of Spirits’.
“The themes came about through me travelling, meeting artists and realising that they are these clusters of urgency – things that artists care about currently.”
At Cockatoo Island ('Embassy of the Real'), you'll discover artists who are interested in science fiction. In the huge Turbine Hall, Korean artist Lee Bul will be creating a utopian cityscape within the cathedral-sized space, concocting a possible future from the dreams and aspirations of humanity.