The Lyon Contemporary Art Biennale

This 17th Lyon Biennale invites artists to address, question and investigate the subject of the waxing and waning relationships of human beings with one another and with their environment.

Isabelle Bertolotti, director of the macLYON, has teamed up with Alexia Fabre, head of the Beaux-Arts de Paris, who has been chosen to curate the biennial. She has been Director of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris since January 2022. Holding the grade of Chief Curator of Heritage, she previously headed MAC VAL, the contemporary art museum of the Department of Val-de-Marne, in Vitry-sur-Seine (2005-2022). She was recruited in 1998 by said Department to research and bring to life this new museum, and wrote the scientific and cultural project for it. At MAC VAL, Alexia Fabre ran an arts and culture policy for contemporary artists and audiences, applying the values of diversity and equality; women artists enjoy equal representation there. 

The main venues of the Lyon Contemporary Art Biennale

Grandes Locos — a new site 

Located by the river Rhône, just downstream from its confluence with the Saône, on a site covering several dozen hectares, Les Grandes Locos is the name of a complex of industrial buildings that were inaugurated in 1846 by the Compagnie des Hauts Fourneaux, Forges et Ateliers d’Oullins, before becoming an SNCF train maintenance centre in the 20th century. These factories, which bear witness to French railway history, were used until 2019 for maintaining electric locomotives and spare parts. Now repurposed as a cultural venue, they are hosting the 17th Lyon Biennale, where the site’s history will resonate in the artists’ works, which speak of travel and movement, repair and care, collective strength, and protest. 

Cité Internationale de la Gastronomie de Lyon — an exceptional city centre venue

For its 17th edition, the Lyon Biennale is taking up residence for the first time in a former hospital, the Grand Hôtel-Dieu, a heritage site devoted in days gone by to hospitality and care. Built in the 12th century, it was reconstructed in the 18th century to the plans of Jacques-Germain Soufflot. In its heritage spaces, such as the Hôpital de la Charité’s archive room and the apothecary’s shops, the Biennale is displaying rituals related to the cycles of living creatures — from birth to death — that echo the site’s medical and religious history. In conjunction with the programming of the Cité Internationale de la Gastronomie de Lyon, which showcases the cultural, emotional and environmental aspects of cookery, the Lyon Biennale is also introducing new conviviality practices through shared actions and collaborative workshops.

macLYON – Musée d’art contemporain — a historic venue for contemporary art

Initially based, on opening in 1984, in a wing of the Palais Saint-Pierre when the City of Lyon decided to assemble  a collection of contemporary art, macLYON relocated in 1995 to the Cité Internationale, a vast architectural complex stretching between the Rhône and Tête d’Or Park. The museum — designed by Renzo Piano, the architect of the entire complex — is a dialogue between the façade of the atrium of the Palais de la Foire, designed by Charles Meysson in the 1920s, and its contemporary portion in red brickwork. For this 17th edition of the Biennale, macLYON is showing a set of works involving human relations — between friends, families or lovers. 

Résonance Artistic vitality in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region

Since 2003 the Lyon Biennale has been bringing together, during its flagship international event, the figures of the highly vibrant regional scene beneath a banner with a generic yet unifying name: Résonance. In doing so, it echoes the events held by art centres, galleries and cultural institutions across the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, but also all those staged by non-profits and artist collectives wishing to engage with the Biennale’s theme. Over the years, Résonance has spanned multiple venues in the field of contemporary art but also in those of literature, dance, theatre, music and film. The resulting ferment is unmatched in the world of biennials: from roughly 30 events in 2003, Résonance had grown by 2022 to more than 250 exhibitions, performances, concerts, screenings and shows — an expansion that reflects contemporary art’s growing reputation and roots in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.