Floating Worlds: Highlights from the 14th Biennale de Lyon
By Andrew Stooke
It
The arms of the rivers Rhône and Saône embrace Lyon. Calm and deep, the water is in tune with artworks shown in the city’s 14th biennial festival that often, beneath shimmering surfaces, express ominous danger. In the four concurrent programs that make up “Mondes Flottants” (or “Floating Worlds”), the overarching theme is of floating as a charmed but precarious state—perhaps a prelude to drowning. For the biennial, Emma Lavigne, who is director of Centre Pompidou-Metz, curated an exhibition in two venues, La Sucrière and Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art; “Rendez-vous” was a separate exhibition for emerging artists; “Veduta” was a series of dialogue events involving people outside the central Lyon conurbation; and a network of heterogeneous exhibitions took place under the title “Resonance” in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.
