Inaugural edition: Rehearsing the Unexpected

In Avilés, weather does not arrive separately from industry. Moisture settles onto steel structures; tidal movements cut through former shipyards; factory archives coexist with public gardens, civic buildings, river sediments, and disused infrastructures. It is within this landscape—shaped simultaneously by extraction, labour, ecological transformation, and everyday life—that the first edition of Climate Biennial: art, industry and territory takes place from June 12 to September 20, 2026.

Titled Rehearsing the Unexpected, the Biennial unfolds thirteen exhibition venues throughout the city and its surrounding territory, bringing together more than forty local, national, and international participants. Rather than approaching climate as a distant theme or abstract emergency, the project understands it as a material and social condition embedded within infrastructures, gestures, and collective memory. This inaugural edition operates through an expansive curatorial framework that integrates newly commissioned works, artistic residencies, and site-specific interventions with a sustained commitment to territorial mediation.

Curated by Amanda Masha Caminals, the exhibition programme navigates the intersections of atmospheric observation, industrial transformation, and emotional landscapes through three conceptual sections: Weather Station, Present Industries, and Grief and Joy. Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Marion Balac, Gabriela Bettini, Carolina Caycedo, Agnes Essonti, Naiza Khan, Noemí Iglesias, Elena Lavellés, Alba Matilla, Otobong Nkanga, Amanda Piña, Mario Santamaría, Rotor Studio, present works spanning sculpture, moving image, sound, and research-based practice, expanding the aesthetic and political imaginaries surrounding climate.

Beyond the exhibition programme, the biennial further unfolds through a programme of collective resonances that positions artistic intervention as a catalyst for local resilience. Through the initiative titled En Colectivo, curated by Zoe López, the biennial accompanies community practices already rehearsing sustainable modes of existence across rural Asturias, blurring the boundaries between exhibition-making and territorial praxis. This dimension expands through the Art + Education programme, developed in collaboration with La Benéfica de Piloña, which transforms regional schools into spaces for collective research. Within this framework, projects such as the Bibliokepos Nomad Garden reposition public facilities as sites for climate adaptation and shared learning.

Under the direction of Atelier itd and El Día Después, the Climate Biennial 2026 public programme unfolds as a living cartography of over sixty activities, extending the biennial’s curatorial strands into the territory and everyday life of Asturias. Through a constellation of situated practices—ranging from eco-fiction laboratories and dialogues on regenerative biennials to sensory activations, industrial heritage drifts, and community gatherings—the biennial transforms parks, schools, cultural venues, and rural environments into sites for exchange, listening, and collective learning. Far from functioning as a parallel programme, the public programme approaches ecological transition as a shared cultural process in which participation, collective imagination, and civic encounter become ways of rehearsing collective forms of public life within a territory in transformation.

The Climate Biennial is promoted by the Ministry for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda, the Principality of Asturias, the City Council of Avilés, and the Atelier itd Foundation. It is supported by the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation and the Community Arts Lab by Porticus.