forms of the surrounding futures

Professional preview of exhibitions: September 15
Press preview and tour of exhibitions: September 15 and September 16
Public opening of exhibitions and performance program: September 16

The twelfth edition of Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA) celebrates artistic practices that embody a critical approach and operate beyond the dominance of normativity. Engaging with imaginative energies, these positions make use of the transformative potential of art to strengthen current possibilities of boundless planetary connectivity.  

Curatorial framework by João Laia.

“The way to deal with asymmetries and violent frenzies that mark the present is not to forget the future—the here and now is simply not enough, queerness should and could be about a desire for another way of being in both the world and time, a desire that resists mandates to accept that which is not enough.” —José Esteban Muñoz  

We are inhabiting a period of abrupt change recently defined as permacrisis. In Western thought, periods of profound change have regularly correlated with a failure to imagine multiple configurations for tomorrow. However, various systems of knowledge and practice urge us to read the current moment not as a permanent crisis but as the tipping point of an imminent and radical transition in historical experience. Echoing the mutually dependent and entangled life-systems on the planet, forms of the surrounding futures forge an expanded alliance of social formations to address current urgencies and celebrate plural narratives for tomorrow.  

forms of the surrounding futures adopt queerness as an expanded perspective to challenge dominant narratives, replacing them with a broad rethinking and remaking of bodies, spaces and times. Adopting a collective and emancipatory position, it embraces multiple agencies in a nonconforming affinity that questions the constructed features of the present and promotes the emergence of multiple futures.   

forms of the surrounding futures employ strategies akin to theatre and stage design to estrange and seduce, proposing cognitive, emotional and sensual forms of engagement. Examining the now, forms of the surrounding futures aim at queering hegemonic understandings of the social, empowering and disseminating narratives that celebrate our collective ability to imagine and rehearse worlds to come. 

The opening program includes performances by Adam Christensen, Joana da Conceição, Niko Hallikainen, Agnė Jokšė, Ania Nowak and Dragana Bar by Kem. 

Artists: Sophia Al-Maria, Adam Christensen, Joana da Conceição, Niko Hallikainen, Rodrigo Hernández, Maria Jerez, Agnė Jokšė, Kem, Tarik Kiswanson, Yarema Malaschuk & Roman Khimei, Esse McChesney, Sandra Mujinga, Rasmus Myrup, Ania Nowak, Outi Pieski, Luiz Roque, Prem Sahib, P. Staff, Iris Touliatou, Ana Vaz, Osías Yanov, Yong Xiang Li, and others. 

Venues:  Gothenburg City Library, Göteborgs Konsthall, Hammarkullen Konsthall, Röda Sten Konsthall  

Registration for the press preview is open here. 
Registration for the professional preview of exhibitions will open in August. 

About GIBCA 
Organizer: Röda Sten Konsthall 
Director: Mia Christersdotter Norman 
Artistic Director: Sarah Hansson 
Curator GIBCA 2023: João Laia 

The Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA) was founded in 2001. As a platform for the presentation of international contemporary art, GIBCA aims to be an important junction between local, national, and international discourses on issues of urgent collective interest. Each biennial consists of several exhibitions and programs hosted by established art institutions in Gothenburg, by independent initiatives, and in the physical and digital public realm.   

Main funders: City of Gothenburg, Region of West Sweden, Swedish Arts Council.   

João Laia is the Chief Curator for exhibitions at Kiasma – Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki. He has a background in social sciences, film theory and contemporary art. Past projects were developed in collaboration with Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Galeria Municipal do Porto; La Casa Encendida, Madrid; MAAT – Museum for Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon; Moscow Young Art Biennial, MMOMA; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Videobrasil, SESC Pompeia, São Paulo. He edited Living Encounters (Kiasma/Mousse, 2022) and A Multiple Community (SESC, 2018) and has been published in magazines such as Art Monthly, Flash Art, frieze, Mousse, Spike and Terremoto. Together with Valentinas Klimašauskas, Laia curated the fourteenth Baltic Triennial (2021) titled The Endless Frontier at the CAC – Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, and in 2024 Klimašauskas and Laia will curate the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale showcasing the artist duo Pakui Hardware. 

Further information 
Press contact: Maria Lundberg, press@gibca.se