The first great hegemonic narrative was written 500 years ago by Magellan and his first circumnavigation of the globe in the context of the rivalry between Portugal and Spain. In the Treaty of Tordesillas both kingdoms divided the world among themselves, leaving the western hemisphere for Spain and the eastern for Portugal.
Malaysian artist Ahmad Fuad Osman now tells the story of Magellan from the perspective of the Malay slave Enrique de Malaca who served as an interpreter for the Portuguese navigator and who, unlike his captain, who died in the Philippines, was one of the few to survive the circumnavigation.
Osman's video serves as the poetic anchor and leitmotif of the Biennale, which examines the state of the world from a decidedly peripheral and non-hegemonic perspective. The echo of Enrique resonates in the new voices of artists from Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Iran, juxtaposed with those of Brazil and Uruguay. Many of these artists come from troubled regions, such as the Caucasus and the Middle East, or from Ukraine, where the greatest conflict between the periphery and the old imperial center is currently taking place.
The 5th edition of the Montevideo Biennial provides a fresh look at the last years of world artistic production, in which a dramatic paradigm shift has taken place. While New York, London, Paris and Berlin were the undisputed reference points for contemporary art until well into the 1990s, now new poles are emerging in Shanghai, Johannesburg, Istanbul or São Paulo, to name just a few of the most important.
The biennials have not only accompanied, but even accelerated, this polycentric process. The Venice Biennale, the mother of all biennials for over a hundred years, and Documenta in Kassel may continue to be considered the most influential art exhibitions, but along with them a new network of biennales has emerged almost explosively, which, from Gwangju in Korea, passing through Singapore, Jakarta, Sharjah, Dakar, Havana, extends to Montevideo. One can almost get the impression that the new impulses are expected less from the traditional metropolises, and more from the "rest of the world".
In fact, only this distance from established centers allows the development of a totally new artistic discourse: without modernist conventions and rituals, without the pressure of the art market and without the usual constraints of urban folklore. Thus artists may breathe freely and work without ties. So what sets this new art apart? In addition to the originality of the themes and the language of forms, it is probably the human factor: an attitude that reaffirms life despite all adversities.
The Montevideo Biennial is one of the privileged places where these alternative aesthetic environments can be presented and discussed, and where, in addition to the traditional North-South Dialogue, a horizontal South-South axis can be established that offers a platform for the new variants of modernity in the 21st century. In Montevideo it is thus possible to accumulate symbolic capital with the help of art.
Despite all the obvious differences, which are due to the asynchrony of modernity in the different regions of the world, it is possible that from the images and ideas of the exhibition arcs of tension are generated that help to detect the force fields hidden between the hemispheres.
And the fact that the iconic parliament building was offered as a venue for a biennial, which would be unthinkable anywhere else in the world, testifies to the extraordinarily liberal open-mindedness of Uruguayan society and its political institutions.