8th Biennale Gherdëina: Persones Persons

You’ve seen me in pictures, drawings, and dreams.
You’ve heard me singing, dancing, and resting.
You’ve felt my fresh air, my limpid waters, my sunny days.
You know my tales of goats and moss, my songs of birds and sighs, my history of sea and stone.
Now, like a spell, I am calling you to join me across rocky paths, valley grasslands, and pale mountains.
And while I call you, you call me. 

My one and many names.
Marmolada. Sella. Fanes. Rosengarten. Civetta. Pala. Cristallo. Puez. Tofane. 

Dolomites, Dolomiti, Dolomiten, Dolomitis. 

Persones Persons.

Persones Persons, the 8th Biennale Gherdëina will open on May 20, 2022 with a series of new installations, performances, sculptures, sound pieces, textile works, walks, and participatory experiences alongside existing and historical works that reverberate the Biennale’s themes, passions and lines of intensity while responding to the unique landscape and setting of the Val Gardena territory.

Curated by Lucia Pietroiusti and Filipa Ramos, BIENNALE GHERDËINA ∞ PERSONES PERSONS features artists Etel Adnan, Chiara Camoni, Alex Cecchetti, Gabriel Chaile, Revital Cohen & Tuur van Balen, Jimmie Durham, Simone Fattal, Barbara Gamper, Kyriaki Goni, Judith Hopf, Ignota (Sarah Shin & Ben Vickers), Karrabing Film Collective, Lina Lapelyte, Britta Marakatt-Labba, Eduardo Navarro, Angelo Plessas, Elizabeth Povinelli, Tabita Rezaire, Sergio Rojas, Giles Round, Thaddäus Salcher, Martina Steckholzer, Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser), Ana Vaz & Nuno da Luz, and Bruno Walpoth.

The Biennale considers forms of personhood in wildlife and landscapes, legal and other, asking how artistic expressions contribute to the recognition of Earth’s rights and to the dilution of divides. It also attends to the ancient and future memories of pathways of animals, matter, people, and plants across ancestral and current systems of migration, seasonal displacement and transhumance in the region and resonating landscapes.

Opening program

Wednesday, May 18 to Saturday, May 21, 2022
Press conference and media preview

Friday, May 20
5pm–11pm
Ortisei
Welcome by the authorities, the Zënza Sëida President Eduard Demetz and the curators of Biennale Gherdëina ∞ Lucia Pietroiusti and Filipa Ramos
Conversation and walk through the artworks in the public space, at Sala Trenker and Hotel Ladinia
Seeds Offering by Sergio Rojas Chavez
Bread Baking Ceremony by Gabriel Chaile in collaboration with Forno by Ivo De Pellegrin
Open-air Apéritif

Saturday, May 21 
10am–12pm
Santa Cristina
SENTIERO by Alex Cecchetti
Ortisei
Seeds Offering by Sergio Rojas Chavez

3:30–5pm
Vallunga, Puez-Odle Nature Park
Becoming horizontal, somatic encounters in nature by Barbara Gamper
an omniscience: an atmos-etheric, transnational, interplanetary cosmist bird opera spanning seven continents and the many verses by Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser)

6–11pm
Castel Gardena/Fischburg, Selva di Val Gardena
MEDITAZION DE DUTA LA CRIATURES by Angelo Plessas
Memory Garden Ritual by Ignota
Open-air dinner and party night at the castle. RSVP below to attend. 

Sunday, May 22
11am–12pm
Castel Gardena/Fischburg, Selva di Val Gardena
More Than Human Composition, Talk with Himali Singh Soin, David Soin Tappeser, Lina Lapelyte, Samuel Runggaldier, Eduard Demetz

The programme continues across the summer until September 25, see the website for the full schedule of events, exhibitions, and the collateral programme. 

For International media and PR requests contact Nicola Jeffs: nj@nicolajeffs.com / T +44 7794 694 754. For Italian media and PR requests, contact Lara Facco: press@larafacco.com / T +39 349 2529989

Lucia Pietroiusti is a curator working at the intersection of art, ecology and systems, usually outside of the gallery format. Pietroiusti is the founder of the General Ecology project at Serpentine, London, where she is currently Strategic Advisor for Ecology. She is the co-founder (with Ashish Ghadiali) of the climate-justice focused non-profit, Radical Ecology. Current projects include the research and festival series, The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish (with Filipa Ramos); Sun & Sea by Rugile Barzdziukaite, Vaiva Grainyte and Lina Lapelyte (2019 Venice Biennale and 2020–2024 international tour); and Being Mothers (E-Werk Luckenwalde). Pietroiusti was a curator of Bodies of Water, the 13th Shanghai Biennale (with Andrés Jaque, Marina Otero Verzier; Filipa Ramos and You Mi). Publications include More-than-Human (with Andrés Jaque and Marina Otero Verzier, 2020); Microhabitable (with Fernando García-Dory, 2020) and PLANTSEX (2019).

Lisbon-born Filipa Ramos is a writer and curator. Her research focuses on how culture addresses ecology, attending to how contemporary art fosters nature cultural relationships between humans and other animals. Ramos is Director of the Contemporary Art Department of the city of Porto, Curator of Art Basel Film, and Founding Curator of the online artists’ cinema Vdrome. She is Lecturer at the Master Programme of the Arts Institute of the Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz, Basel, where she leads the Art and Nature seminars. She co-curates the humanities and science festival The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish (with Lucia Pietroiusti). In 2021, she co-curated “Bodies of Water”, the 13th Shanghai Biennale (with Andrés Jaque, Lucia Pietroiusti, Marina Otero Verzier and Mi You), and co-curated the group exhibition Feet of Clay at Porto’s City Gallery (with Chus Martinez). Previously, she curated the large exhibition project Animalesque at Bildmuseet Umeå, Sweden and BALTIC Gateshead. Ramos was Editor-in-Chief of art-agenda/e-flux, Associate Editor of Manifesta Journal and contributed for Documenta 13 and 14. Her upcoming book, The Artist as Ecologist, will be published by Lund Humphries in 2023.

Zënza Sëida VFG is a non-profit organisation committed to fostering contemporary art as a fundamental tool for growth in South Tyrol. One of its core activities is Biennale Gherdëina. Founded by Doris Ghetta in 2008 and located in the unique setting of the Unesco World Heritage Dolomites, Biennale Gherdëina promotes the dialogue between innovation and the valley’s renown wood sculpture tradition. Today, Biennale is an institution rooted in South Tyrol and it hosts local, national and international artists, thinkers and audiences confronting with the traditions of the Gardena Valley.  Biennale Gherdëina worked with curators Adam Budak (trilogy), Luca Beatrice, Günther Oberhollenzer, and with artists including Alicja Kwade, Marzia Migliora, Anna Hulačová, Claudia Comte, Sonia Leimer, Nicola Samorì, Franz Kapfer, Christian Kosmas Mayer, Stefan Papčo, Mathilde Rosier, Egill Sæbjörnsson, Jiří Příhoda, Alessandro de Francesco, Velasco Vitali, Bruno Walpoth, Marinella Senatore, Paloma Varga Weisz, Kris Lemsalu and Nicholas Party.