Artistic directors of documenta 15 to talk at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum

Over the next few days, artists from the Ruangrupa artists initiative will visit the Basque Country to learn about the artistic models and practices in the Basque context. In 2022 they will stage the prestigious exhibition documenta, which every five years brings together artists and working groups from around the world to Kassel, Germany. In an open conference to be held at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, the Jakarta-based collective will develop their concept for documenta 15.

Over the next few days, artists from the ruangrupa artists initiative will visit the Basque Country to learn about the artistic models and practices in the Basque context. In 2022 they will stage the prestigious exhibition documenta, which every five years brings together artists and working groups from around the world to Kassel, Germany. In an open conference to be held at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, the Jakarta-based collective will develop their concept for documenta 15.

"We want to create a globally oriented, cooperative, interdisciplinary art and culture platform that will have an impact beyond the 100 days of documenta 15. Our curatorial approach aims at a different community-oriented model of resource usage – economical, but also taking ideas, knowledge, programs and innovations into account. If documenta was launched in 1955 to heal war wounds, why shouldn’t we focus documenta 15 on today’s injuries, especially ones rooted in colonialism, capitalism, or patriarchal structures, and contrast them with partnership-based models that enable people to have a different view of the world?"

Lumbung is the title ruangrupa proposed for its project. Lumbung, directly translatable as “rice barn”, is a collective pot or accumulation system, where crops produced by a community is stored as a future shared common resource.

The talk will take place on February 18 at 7pm and will include ruangrupa director Ade Darmawan, programme coordinator Indra Ameng, and Ayşe Güleç, researcher and activist.

The visit talk by ruangrupa falls under the ZABAL project promoted by the Etxepare Basque Institute. The purpose of the initiative is to give Basque artists new opportunities to create ways of connecting with the international context. ZABAL shines a light on the Basque artistic context by inviting international curators, art critics and museum directors to visit the Basque Country.