‘Superposition: Equilibrium & Engagement’ is title of this year’s Biennale of Sydney, an ambitious exhibition stretching across seven venues throughout the city. The show draws on the concept of ‘superposition’, a term used in quantum physics to refer to an overlapping situation. Interrogating the tensions, collisions, and flows that make up the world we live in, the work in this Biennale explores the space between scientific method and creative practice, geographical barriers and imagined boarders, and real and virtual domains.

Canvas: Art & Ideas interviewed six exhibiting artists and collectives to discuss art as activism, creating as community-building, and the artist’s role within our current political landscape.

Sa Sa Art Projects

Stiev Selapak are Cambodia’s ‘art rebels’. Their artist-run-initative in Phnom Penh, Sa Sa Art Projects, is part-gallery, part-home, and part-learning space. Aurora Scott spoke with Khvay Samnang, Lim Sokchanlina and Vuth Lyno.

Khaled Sabsabi

Khaled Sabsabi is a Sydney-based visual artist of Lebanese descent, whose practice engages with the philosophies of Sufism to explore notions of harmony and reconciliation. David Capra and Giselle Stanborough chat to him about his work ‘Bring the Silence’, a five-channel audio visual installation made up of footage from inside the sacred burial site of one of the great Sufi saints, Muhammad Nizamuddin Auliya (1238–1325 CE).

Francisco Camacho Herrera

Colombian artist Francisco Camacho Herrera observes the role of fiction in our everyday lives, and the larger historical and political narratives we operate within. Playful and dreamlike, his video work ‘Parallel Narratives‘ draws links between pre-Hispanic America and Chinese antiquities in a nonlinear exploration of the fluidity of personal memories and collective cultural subconscious.

Semiconductor

English art duo Semiconductor are inspired by scientific process. The starting point for ‘Earthworks’ was a model used to map layers of earth and tectonic forces, which they translated into computer generated noise and animation. The result is immersive, colourful and loud (as you can hear for yourself in David Capra and Giselle Stanborough interview with them)!

Jacob Kierkegaard

Jacob Kierkegaard believes in the transformative power of listening. He’s recorded glaciers melting, documented locations devastated by nuclear activity, and in his work ‘Through The Wall’, he offers soundscapes of the Israeli West Bank Barrier—or Apartheid Wall.

Koji Ryui

Koji Ryui’s work looks to create complex networks. Created in response the specific environment of Cockatoo Island, ‘Jamais Vu’ explores concepts of geometric abstraction through a built space of everyday objects and the sound Koji developed from them.

WHAT:Biennale of Sydney
WHERE: Museum of Contemporary Art, Cockatoo Island, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney Opera House, Carriageworks, Artspace, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art
WHEN: 16 March–11 June
HOW MUCH: Free

Image credits (in order of appearance):
Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC) with Baloji and Renzo Martens, CATPC – the artists from the plantation. A portrait by Baloji (video still)
Khvay Samnang, ‘Human Nature’ (detail)
Khaled Sabsabi, ‘Bring the Silence’ (video still)
Francisco Camacho Herrera, Parallel Narratives (video still)
Semiconductor, ‘Earthworks’
Jacob Kirkegaard, ‘Through the Wall‘
Koji Ryui, ‘Jamais vu’

Podcasts produced by Aurora Scott