The third edition of the Biennale Matter of Art will take place from June 14, 2024, to September 29, 2024, in the Grand Hall of the National Gallery Prague, the Lidice Gallery, and other venues. Curated by Katalin Erdődi and Aleksei Borisionok, the project will also feature a new bilingual publication comprising theoretical texts and artistic contributions. Admission to the biennale as well as the accompanying public program will be free of charge.

tranzit.cz has commissioned several artists to create new works for the biennale, such as painter Kateryna Lysovenko, interdisciplinary artists Alicja Rogalska and Nikita Kadan, filmmaker and researcher Marta Popivoda, the research group DAVRA (represented by Madina Joldybek, Zumrad Mirzalieva, and Saodat Ismailova), artist, curator, and architect Zbyněk Baladrán, artist and researcher Tomáš Uhnák, and björnsonova & Nik Timková, Zuzana Žabková, Vojtěch Hlaváček, Tamara Antonijević, Tanja Šljivar.

The two curators, Katalin Erdődi and Aleksei Borisionok, graft their interests in rural change as social change and the legacies and futures of workers’ movements in order to focus on forgotten stories of social unrest and underrepresented micro-histories of sociopolitical transformation in Central and Eastern Europe and beyond. Bringing together diverse artistic contributions and discursive interventions, the curators look for the resonances between historical struggles and the contemporary moment. Working through the notion of grafting – taken from agriculture and medicine – Matter of Art creates connections between social movements across the changing contexts of the rural and the urban, attending to how the notion of work and the worker finds new meanings. The Biennale Matter of Art marks the first ever collaboration between Erdődi and Borisionok, who are both based in Vienna.

“The unfolding global crisis spans from the extractive work of bodies and algorithms to the exhaustion of living conditions on our planet. Therefore, we ask what can be retrieved from the history of workers’ movements. Labor unrest, both failed and successful, can illuminate the present moment and possible futures of solidarity, political organizing, and justice,” says curator and writer Aleksei Borisionok. He has written for various magazines and publications and curated exhibitions on education and unlearning, workers’ movements and strikes, social movements, and artistic practices in Vilnius, Kyiv, Stockholm, Vienna, and Minsk.

“Rural areas provide for our basic needs, from food to diverse resources and raw materials, which makes rural and urban lives deeply entangled and interdependent. Nevertheless, the voices of people living and working in the countryside are often missing from the public discourse. I am interested in what we can learn from the rural: How can we look beyond cultural stereotypes that tend to regard the countryside as politically backwards and passive and recognize its political potential?” asks curator and dramaturg Katalin Erdődi. Since 2017 Erdődi has been researching rural change through site-specific, collaborative artistic, and curatorial approaches, working across different rural contexts in Hungary, Germany, and Spain.