Sweet Taboos
28 October – 10 November 2005
The National Gallery of Arts
Tirana
GO INSIDE/ ( EPISODE5)
Hou Hanru, Curator
On 28 October 2005, nearby the National Gallery of Arts in Tirana, GO INSIDE was inagurated, the last of the five episodes of Sweet Taboos, the theme of TIRANABIENNALE3.
GO INSIDE, curated by Hou Hanru, marks the finissage of the International Biennale of Art, which in four previous episodes, saw over 60 artists exploring the question of taboos in our society, reflecting on their meaning and nature in relation to the concepts of power, defeat, democracy, sexuality, idealism and integration.
10 September 2005 the inauguration of TEMPTATIONS/ EPISODE 1 marked the opening of the third edition of the Tirana Biennale.
While in TEMPTATIONS, curated by Edi Muka and Gezim Qendro (Albania), artists including Olafur Eliasson, Phil Collins and Pal Hollender analyzed how taboos correlate with the idea of power and the temptation to violate its confines, in the second episode, TO LOSE WITHOUT BEING A LOSER, Roberto Pinto (Italy), invited artists such as Tania Bruguera, Jota Castro, Maja Bajevic and Stefano Romano, to use their work to reflect on the concept of defeat, not as incapacity to win, but rather as alternative view of the world.
DEMOCRACIES, title of the third episode, curated by Zdenka Badovinac (Slovenia), focused on parallel economies, exploring the different new possibilities in the concept of democracy, through artworks and new operations, such as permission to screen the film THE TAKE, a documentary on the effects of globalization and their implications, which the artist Apolonia Sustersic invited unemployed workers in Albania to attend free.
Jessica Lagunas, Mario Rizzi, Regina José Galindo and 12 other artists, in BITTERSWEET, curated by Joa Ljungberg (Sweden), confront one of societys most contradictory topics: sex and sexuality, investigating relationships between body, power and commercialization.
For the final episode, GO INSIDE, Hou Hanru (China/France), invited 25 artists from different countries to test themselves against the spaces of Tiranas National Gallery, the place where the countrys artistic memory is conserved.
The power of restructuring inherent in the process of deconstructing the past, the curator believes, is enormous and irresistible and is seen almost more as a taboo that should be resisted and one we should oppose.
GO INSIDE, emphasizing the connections between manifestations of the present both with history and with local conditions, comprises sculpture, installations, projections and sound projects by Adel Abdessemed, AES, Michael Blum, Magali Claude, Bannu Cennetogul, Latifa Echakhch, Cao Fei, Gimhongsok, Ivan Grubanov, Jens Haaning, Norotishi Hirakawa, Mella Jaarsma, H.H.Lim, David Maljkovic, Michael Rakowitz, Sam Samore, Franck Scurti, Chen Shaoxiong, Ru Xiaofan, Kan Xuan, Huang Yong Ping, and Shen Yuan.
Now being held for the third time, the Tirana Biennale, has not only established itself as an international art event, but also plays a significant role in the process of growth taking place in Albania, a country that has intuited to what extent culture can represent a point of departure, rather than one of arrival, in economic development.
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