Therefore, the conceptual axis of the 29th Biennial of Graphic Arts titled Dogodek/The Event is a presentation of selected artistic events in four various themes, each linked to one of the four central exhibition grounds or stages. In the International Center of Graphic Arts in the Tivoli castle, a set of projects titled Generosity is exhibited, the theme Violence is placed in the Modern Gallery, creations under the common title Ritual are presented in the Cankarjev dom Gallery, while in the Jakopič Gallery the project series with the common denominator Emptiness is taking place.

The mentioned approach of the curator Beti Žerovec to the concept and the implementation of this year’s Biennial is distinctly author-based and explicitly research–oriented since it wants to define modern trends in art and compare them with artistic streams from a little more distant past. For this purpose, a 15-hour marathon of debates and lectures is included in the Biennial program which are planned to expand the covered theme also beyond the narrow circles of art. Professionally more focused on the world of art, however, is the international symposium to which numerous experts were invited in order to furthe.

Every time two awards are granted within the Biennial. The four-member international jury awarded this year’s Grand Prix to visual artist Regina Jose Galindo from Guatemala, born in 1974, who works in the field of performance and body art and frequently reacts with her work to daily socio-political issues, e.g. by thematizing violence against women which is also a theme her three author works presented in Ljubljana. The Life Achievement Award was granted posthumously to Miklos Erdely (1928–1986), a versatile Hungarian artist who was an architect, a writer, a poet and a film creator and who importantly contributed to Hungarian neo-avant-garde and conceptual art.
Within this year’s Biennial, the Alkatraz Gallery displays an exhibition of the awardee of the 28th Biennial of Graphic Arts from two years ago, the artistic cooperative Justseeds.

Two accompanying exhibitions are also on display within the Biennial. In the Lek Gallery of the Lek pharmaceutical company, 17 graphic sheets from the collection of International Graphic Arts Center are displayed that are a legacy from the initial period of the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts. The other accompanying event is the presentation of 25 concepts of the corporate identity of the 29th biennial of Graphic Arts prepared by the students of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design of the University of Ljubljana under the auspices of their mentors at visual communication seminars.

In relation to this year’s Biennial which is conceptualized very ambitiously and innovatively, some polemic reactions to changed orientation of this event should be mentioned which now almost entirely deviates from its traditional concept that was strictly linked to graphic for several decades but since 2001 it has been expanded to all reproducible media. This meant a break with the tradition already a decade ago and was countered and opposed by many. This year’s break, however, is even more radical since the area of graphic was almost completely marginalized by the authors of the exhibition which is no longer based on reproductive media but opens in the direction of considerably expanded definition of artistic expression.

Arguing in favor of such a shift, the curator Beti Žerovc declares that the attachment of the Biennial to graphic art was never absolute and exclusive since its goal initial goal has been a great international art exhibition which was, at that time when the Biennial was founded, feasible by exhibiting graphic art works.

Of course, those opposing the new direction of the Biennial disagree with such arguments by claiming that by deviating from graphic, the Ljubljana Biennial which remains graphic only in the title but no longer in its content, has wasted a valuable primacy in the area where it was really globally recognizable and leading. From such a perspective of ‘historic memory’ that sees unforgettable reputation and importance and the range of the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts in the decades preceding the turn of the millennium, this is supposed to mean irreparable damage and impoverishment of the event.

Of course there is no final judge to be able to determine who is right, but nevertheless, the clash of the opposing opinions and positions regarding new directions taken by the Biennial is a proof that this is still a very vital event which is by no means spared by the dialectics of change leading to inevitable clashes between innovators and traditionalists. If it was otherwise, it would be possible to doubt whether the central international art event in Slovenia that has been organized every second year for almost half a century, really still is a living organism that can relevantly mediate and reflect today’s creativity in the area of visual arts in the increasingly globalized world.

Text by Albert Kos, Sinfo, October 2011

Photo: archive Ljubljana Biennial

The Ljubljana Biennial of graphic arts is the most prominent event in the area of visual arts in Slovenia with a respectable tradition reaching into mid-1950’s.