Dalla Biennale alle biennali. Il desiderio impossibile From Biennale to Biennials. The Impossible Desire

An Appeal for a Possible Alternative: A Microhistory of the Arab Biennale When considering today exhibition phenomena such as biennials in the Arab world, and the very recent Riyadh Biennale (2021), the general attitude among audiences is one of curiosity in the face of the novelty of the event. However, the roots of the phenomenon of “biennalization” in the Middle East should be sought in a moment of profound international crisis of the institution itself, which occurred between 1970 and 1978. While in Italy attempts were being made to reform the outdated statutes of national exhibition institutions, the rest of the world was trying to offer alternative solutions, to reconstitute and reform the canon. In Baghdad in 1974, the General Union of Arab Plastic Arts, founded in Damascus in 1971, felt the need to establish a shared platform and a space for dialogue for artists working across the Arab world, which was already deeply divided. Under the impulse of a rising pan-Arabism, the Biennale was conceived from the outset as an itinerant institution, anticipating by two decades the contemporary European Manifesta. It was intended by nature to differ from Western biennials, addressing prominence to the central role of the visual arts in the formation of a future unified Arab world. It also included poetry readings, music events and moments of discussion, while deliberately excluding explicit space for the art market. Artists were assigned the primary role of struggling, in a spirit of cooperation, for their independence and for international recognition. Fourteen countries participated: Algeria, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine (represented by the Palestine Liberation Organization), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Tunisia. In this regard, the testimony of Toni Maraini was crucial, as she described and documented the event in the Moroccan art and culture magazine Integral. The experience was short-lived, lasting only three editions (the 1st edition in Baghdad in 1974, with the participation of 14 Arab countries including the PLO; the 2nd edition in Rabat in 1976; and the 3rd edition, the least celebrated, held in Libya in 1978). Although overshadowed by the failure of the political message it carried, it would be worth revisiting today, in light of the contemporary urgency to rethink the notion of the global as it has been understood so far. In this specific case, the biennial model functioned as an alternative device, representing an extreme attempt to break down the barriers that kept Arab artists politically and geographically divided, bringing them together through a platform conceived collectively by the various national delegations. Moreover, it opened up significant opportunities for the Arab speaking world that were likely not offered by other cultural forms: while on the one hand there was an effort to transform the internationalist nature of the model, on the other hand its local dimension was forcefully accentuated, aiming to achieve a specific political objective through the development of attempts at cultural and artistic independence.