The Biennial Stars: Meet the 17 (Perhaps Unexpected) Artists Who Have Defined Our Current Era of International Art Shows – artnet News

This is part of the Biennial Artist Project, a series on the stars of the biennial circuit. You can also read our critics take on the list and a report on the economics of being a biennial star. The full list of biennial artists (and which galleries represent them) is available to Artnet News Pro members.

If you could somehow see every biennial or triennial in the last five years, what patterns would emerge? Which stars would shine brightest?

For this project, we analyzed the artist lists for 211 recurring international art events that have happened or been announced in the five years since the opening of Documenta 14 in April 2017. This is a somewhat arbitrary time period (the 2017 Venice Biennale is not included, since it opened in February 2017, while the 2017 Skulptur Projekte Mnster is, since it opened in June of that same year). However, with Documenta 15 about to open, it gives a convenient window to look at the figures who have defined the zeitgeist of this particular half decade in art.

The resulting list looks at figures in big events like the Venice Biennale and the So Paulo Biennial. But it also takes into account many new biennials that sprung up in this period (and that may or may not carry on), as well as hard-to-classify events like Bienalsur, which is technically based in Argentina but seeks to create a simultaneous art conversation about the Global South in far-flung venues, from Houston to Riyadh.

Chronologically, the final artist list included in our tally comes from the upcoming 2023 Sharjah Biennale, which was announced years ago; delayed by the pandemic, it is the final show organized by the late Okwui Enwezor. For the sake of providing some kind of limit to the selection, we didnt include architecture, design, or photo biennials, focusing on shows dedicated to art (admittedly a somewhat arbitrary disciplinary distinction).

While we are bound to have left out some events, the overall pattern is striking enough that it is not likely to change considerably. Overall, 1,599 artists emerged who had appeared in more than one of these big survey shows in this time period (the full list is available to Artnet News Pro subscribers); 591 appeared in three or more; 260 in four or more; and so on. The list, in other words, follows the classic superstar distribution, with attention becoming more concentrated the higher you go, and narrowing to focus on an elite with many times the exposure of the rest.

Below are this eras 17 biggest biennial stars, comprising all the artists we found who appeared in eight or more biennials in the past five years.

Korakrit Arunanondchai. Photo: Benjamin Bechet.

Born: 1986

Based in: Bangkok and Brooklyn

Appeared in: Athens Biennale 2018; Baltic Triennial 2018; Biennale de lImage en Mouvement 2018; October Salon/Belgrade Biennale 2018; Asian Art Biennial (Taiwan) 2019; Venice Biennale 2019; Whitney Biennial 2019; Istanbul Biennial 2019; Performa 2019; Singapore Biennale 2019; Yokohama Triennale 2020; Biennale Gherdina 2020; Gwangju Biennale 2021; Kathmandu Triennale 2022

Notable Works: No History in a Room Filled With Funny Names 5 (2018)

Arunanondchai is a globe-trotting contemporary-art polymath, working between painting, installation, film, and performance. Since graduating from Columbias MFA program in 2012, Arunanondchai has become best known for immersive video installations like No History in a Room Filled With Funny Names 5, shown at the Biennale de lImage en Mouvement in 2018 and then in Venice in 2019, weaving together personal narrative, current events, Thai folklore, queer club aesthetics, and more.

In Western white spaces, the work often sits in a neutral ground where a life lived doesnt really enterits like life contaminates the space of art, he told the White Review last year, explaining his method. And when life is allowed to enter, it suddenly dominateshow the work can be read. I wanted to find a type of storytelling where all my interests could come together, without these limitations.

Like many artists on this list, Arunanondchai is also a quintessential collaborator, creating works alongside a recurring cast of colleagues including performer boychild and director and installation designer Alex Gvojic. Ubiquitous on the global biennial scene in the past five years, Arunanondchai has also organized his very own biennial-type event: the Ghost Festival, which brought a cohort of other biennial stars to Thailand in 2018, including Ian Cheng and Samson Young.

Uriel Orlow, Cmo se llamaban las plantas antes de que tuvieran nombre (Guatemala) (2020-2021). Photo by Hugo Quinto, courtesy of Alexia Tala.

Born: 1973

Based in: London and Lisbon

Appeared in: Manifesta 2018; Moscow Biennale 2018; Yinchuan Biennale 2018; Taipei Biennial 2020; Coventry Biennial 2019; Lubumbashi Biennale 2019; Bienal de Arte Paiz 2021; Momentum Biennial 2021; Thailand Biennale 2021; Vienna Biennale for Change 2021; Berlin Biennale 2022; British Art Show 2022; Kathmandu Triennale 2022; Mardin Biennial 2022

Notable Works: Wishing Trees (2018), Learning from Artemisia (2019)

The Switzerland-born Orlow is known for honing in on specific locations and micro-histories, often using botanical knowledge to explore the notion of plants as political actors, and elsewhere the legacies of colonialism, spatial manifestations of memory, and blind spots of representation.

Spanning film, drawing, photography, and sound, his work is particularly well-suited to the biennial format because it speaks to both the local context and universal themes. It stresses long-term collaboration and often involves relationships that persist beyond the time-frame of the biennial, gallerist Arthur Gruson told Artnet News. Orlows anchoring of his projects in a particular place whilst addressing translocal issues and his commitment to finding meaningful image regimes and modes of representation result in artistic contributions that have a socio-political grounding and are valued by local as well as international audiences.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan poses for a portrait during the ceremonies for the Turner Prize 2019. (Photo by Stuart C. Wilson/Stuart Wilson/Getty Images for Turner Contemporary)

Born: 1985

Based in: Dubai

Appeared in: Asian Art Biennial (Taiwan) 2017; Biennale de lImage en Mouvement 2018; Art Encounters Biennial (Romania) 2019; Bienalsur 2019; Coventry Biennial 2019; Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts 2019; Sharjah Biennial 2019; Venice Biennale 2019; Sydney Biennale 2020; Havana Biennial 2021; So Paulo Biennial 2021; Berlin Biennale 2022; Toronto Biennial 2022

Notable Works: Walled Unwalled (2018); After SFX (2018)

Lawrence Abu Hamdan famously styles himself a private ear (as opposed to a private eye). His artwork and research often involve careful investigations of sounds and voices as witnesses of violence and injustice. He works in video, audio documentaries, installations, and workshops to examine the thresholds of sound and voice, often leaning on sound as a vehicle for truth in the absence of visual information.

Recent subjects include the trial of Oscar Pistorius and the recollections of survivors of Saydnaya prison who were kept in darkness at all times. In 2019, Abu Hamdan jointly won the Turner Prize for his exhibition Earwitness Theatre and for his performance After SFX, which was also seen at the 2021 So Paulo Biennial.

Members of the Danish collective Superflex [left to right] Jakob Fenger, Rasmus Nielsen and Bjornstjerne Christiansen pose with their Turbine Hall installation at the Tate Modern. (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images)

Based in: Copenhagen

Appeared in: ARoS Triennial 2017; Gwangju Biennale 2018; Qalandiya International 2018; Desert X 2019; Thessaloniki Biennale 2019; Vienna Biennale for Change 2019; Desert X AlUla 2020; Thailand Biennale 2021; Vienna Biennale for Change 2021; North Atlantic Triennial 2022; Riga Biennial 2022

Notable Works: Deep Sea Minding (201821); The Mammoth Rehearsal Sessions (2021)

The Danish art group Superflex has spent more than a quarter century creating their hard-to-categorize, sometimes humorous, always socially engaged art. The collectivewhose founding members are Bjornstjerne Christiansen, Jakob Fenger and Rasmus Nielsenworks collaboratively, both among themselves (no one member ever gets credit for an idea) and with bureaucratic institutions and larger research institutions of various kinds. We like to engage with systems by going inside to challenge them, Christiansen told the New York Times. When youre inside, you can stir things up much more.

Multiple works created between 2017 and 2022 spun off from their larger, three-year initiative Deep Sea Minding, an ambitious melding of science, art, and environmentalism that involved a series of voyages aimed at researching the possibilities of new types of marine habitats that respond to a warming world. Their climate-change drive-in movie installation, Dive-In, at the 2019 Desert X Biennial was made of the coral-pink material they have created for this purpose, in anticipation of a possible future desert flooded by rising seas. For The Mammoth Rehearsal Sessions at the Thailand Biennale in 2021, they set up a group hypnosis session where art lovers were prompted to imagine themselves as wooly mammoths being driven to extinction.

Chiharu Shiota, artist, working on a huge installation in the foyer of the Gropius Bau, June 2019. (Photo by Ralf Hirschberger/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Born: 1972

Based in: Berlin

Appeared in: Jakarta Biennale 2017; Oku-Noto Triennale 2017; OpenArt (Sweden) 2017; Socle du Monde Biennale 2017; October Salon/Belgrade Biennale 2018; Shenzhen Biennale 2018; Honolulu Biennial 2019; Manifesta 2022; Setouchi Triennale 2019; Bangkok Biennale 2022; Oku-Noto Triennale 2020

Notable Works: Becoming Painting (1994); The Key in the Hand (2015)

The Japanese-born artist is best known for creating immersive installations with interwoven skeins of thread. Her massive nets hold small personal objects like keys and spring from desks, boats, or bed frames. Born in 1972 in Osaka, Shiota studied painting at Kyoto Seika University before moving to Berlin to train with Marina Abramovic.

Her artistic breakthrough came in 1994, when she staged Becoming Painting, a performance in which she poured toxic red enamel paint over her body, burning her skin in the process. The work marked her break with painting and the beginning of her quest to place both the artist and the viewer inside her own creations. Perhaps her most famous installation, The Key in the Hand, was her contribution to the Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015. She transformed the exhibition space into a web of red yarn; at the end of each thread was a key.

Portrait of Naeem Mohaiemen. Photo by Abeer Hoque, courtesy Turner Prize.

Born: 1969

Based in: New York

Appeared in: Bucharest Biennale 2018; Front Triennial 2018; Industrial Art Biennial (Croatia) 2018; Lahore Biennial 2018; Liverpool Biennial 2018; Art Encounters Biennial (Romania) 2019; Yokohama Triennale 2020; Kyiv Biennial 2021; OFF Biennale (Hungary) 2021; Front Triennial 2022

Notable Works: United Red Army (2011); Tripoli Cancelled (2017); Two Meetings and a Funeral (2017)

Now teaching at Columbia University, Mohaimen participated in the Visible Collective in the 2000s, an important group that agitated around the persecution of Arabs and Muslims at the height of the U.S. War on Terror. In the 2010s, he became celebrated for ambitious, expansive film installations like Two Meetings and a Funeral, premiered at Documenta in 2017, which concentrates on the Non-Aligned Movement of countries that tried to escape the bipolar order of the Cold War as the seed of a potential alternate political history, featuring Marxist historian Vijay Prashad.

I say what I do is a critique imbricated with love for this movement, he told Bidoun when he was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2018. But it is not naive. The story is tragic, but its more Shakespearean than Greek. Failure was not inevitable.

Taus Makhacheva. Courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation.

Born: 1983

Based in: Moscow

Appeared in: Ural Industrial Biennial 2017; Liverpool Biennial 2018; Manifesta 2018; Riga Biennial 2018; Yinchuan Biennale 2018; Art Encounters Biennial (Romania) 2019; Lyon Biennale 2019; Bangkok Biennale 2020; Lahore Biennial 2020; Yokohama Triennale 2020

Notable Works: Tightrope (2015); Quantitative Innity of the Objective(2019)

The artist made a splash in the international art world with Tightrope (2015), a video that captured a tightrope walker carrying 61 copies of works from the collection of the Dagestan Museum of Fine Art across a Caucasus ravine. Like much of Makhachevas work, the videowhich was included in the 2017 Venice Biennaleexplores the factors that shape national identity and what happens when two cultures collide. (The artist grew up in Moscow but her roots are in Dagestan, which came under Russian control in the early 19th century.)

Since then, Makhacheva has moved away from work focused on specific geographies to explore physical and emotional transformation. At the 2018 Liverpool Biennale, she set up a fully functioning spa with custom beauty products and ASMR video backdrops. At the Yokohama Triennale, she presented Quantitative Innity of the Objective (also shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize), a room full of offbeat gym equipment that was activated by live gymnasts.

Artist Zheng Bo leads visitors in an Ecosensibility Exercise during his exhibition entitled Wanwu Council at Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Adam Berry/Getty Images)

Born: 1974

Based in: Lantau Island, Hong Kong

Appeared in: Manifesta 2018; Taipei Biennial 2018; Thailand Biennale 2018; Yinchuan Biennale 2018; Yokohama Triennale 2020; Guangzhou Image Triennial 2021; Liverpool Biennial 2021; Hawaii Triennial 2022; Venice Biennale 2022; Sydney Biennale 2022

Notable works: Pteridophilia (2016); Le Sacre du printemps (Tandvrkstallen) (2021)

Born in Beijing, Zheng now resides on Hong Kongs largest outlying island of Lantau, one of the financial hubs last vestiges of nature. This choice of habitat is almost a mirror of his socially and ecologically engaged art practice.

Zhengs ongoing research, performance, and video art investigates human-plant coexistence, inviting us to rethink our positions and relationships with nature, ecology, and social aspects in our world, independent curator Angelika Li told Artnet News. The notion of interconnectedness among all living beings explored in Zhengs work resonates especially strongly in the wake of the pandemic, Li added: His projects create space for us to breathe and meditate, bringing us the awareness of the meditative and spiritual qualities from nature, the qualities that we once were not aware of.

Eyal Weizman, the director of Forensic Architecture. Courtesy of Forensic Architecture.

Established: 2010

Based in: London

Appeared in: Ural Industrial Biennial 2017; Manifesta 2018; Moscow Biennale 2018; Shanghai Biennale 2018; Art Encounters Biennial (Romania) 2019; Whitney Biennial 2019; Bienal de Arte Paiz 2021; Berlin Biennale 2022; Biennale Warszawa 2022

Notable Works: The Long Duration of a Split Second (201819); Triple Chaser (2019)

Formed in 2010 under the auspices of the art school Goldsmiths, Forensic Architecture has grown into a hybrid research center, watchdog organization, and art collective with powerful allies like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The group of data analysts, architects, sound engineers, and even smell specialists use everything from cell-phone video to detailed reenactments in order to uncover lies, human rights violations, and crimes committed by some of the worlds most powerful.

One of the groups most impactful projects, The Long Duration of a Split Second, began as a means to clarify what exactly happened on the night hundreds of Israeli policemen raided a Bedouin village to demolish a few houses and two people ended up dead. Compiling footage and sound clips recorded by witnesses, as well as interviews, models, and press clippings, Forensic Architecture was able to prove that police had, indeed, opened fire first. Its video installations, which have been displayed at museums and biennials around the globe, stubbornly refuse to aestheticize these investigations, and instead lay out in clear-eyed, methodical fashion how the collective arrives at its conclusions.

Hito Steyerl, artist, in the art collection K21. (Photo by Rolf Vennenbernd/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Born: 1966

Based in: Berlin

Appeared in: Skulptur Projekte Mnster 2017; Bienalsur 2017; Jakarta Biennale 2017; Busan Biennale 2018; Ghost Festival 2018; Kyiv Biennial 2019; OpenArt (Sweden) 2019; Venice Biennale 2019; Art Encounters Biennial (Romania) 2021

Notable Works: Liquidity, Inc. (2014); Factory of the Sun (2015)

The Munich-born artist is known for videos and installations that explore financial systems, surveillance, migration, and militarization through a mix of barbed humor and dogged research. Shes not afraid to bite the hand that feeds her: she declined the German governments Federal Cross of Merit to protest its failure to support artists during lockdown, and created an augmented reality app for her show at the Serpentine that erased the Sackler familys name from the facade. (The gallery has since done the same IRL.) One of her contributions to the 2019 Venice Biennale was Leonardos Submarine, a video installation targeting the arms manufacturer Finmeccanica, which has supplied weapons used by the Turkish armed forces against civilians in Syria and sold war planes to Saudi Arabia.

Marwa Arsanios. Photo: Nada Zgank. Courtesy of the Onassis Foundation.

Born: 1978

Based: Berlin and Beirut

Appeared in: Gwangju Biennale 2018; Lule Biennial 2018; Qalandiya International 2018; Biennale Warszawa 2019; Sharjah Biennial 2019; Berlin Biennale 2020; Lahore Biennial 2020; Documenta 2022; Mardin Biennial 2022

Notable Works: Who is Afraid of Ideology (201721)

Architectural models, magazine back issues, topographic maps, first-person interviewsthese are the materials that fuel the work of Marwa Arsanios. Born in Washington, D.C. and educated at the Lebanese American University in Beirut and the University of the Arts, London, Arsanios creates films, installations, and even textiles that emerge from a rigorous research process.

Much of her work examines dynamics at the intersection of feminist politics, resistance movements, and struggles over land. Her ambitious film series Who is Afraid of Ideology (201721) knits together the experiences of Indigenous farmers and organizers in Colombia, Mexico, Syria, Iraq, and northern Lebanon, as well as activists from the Kurdish autonomous womens movement.

Monira al Qadiri, Orbital (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.

Born: 1983

Based in: Berlin

Appeared in: Asia Pacific Triennial 2018; Athens Biennale 2018; Lule Biennial 2018; Aichi Triennale 2019; Seoul Mediacity Biennale 2021; Venice Biennale 2022; Sharjah Biennial 2023; Asian Art Biennial (Taiwan) 2021; Guangzhou Image Triennial 2021

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The Biennial Stars: Meet the 17 (Perhaps Unexpected) Artists Who Have Defined Our Current Era of International Art Shows - artnet News