BIENALSUR 2023

Taking place as part of the 4th edition of BIENALSUR, this collaboration is part of a shared commitment to dialogue and sharing between the artistic scenes, to offer audiences a diversity of creative forms. It illustrates the links that Les Abattoirs has nurtured for many years with the Ibero-American scene.

Sebastián Díaz Morales invites us on a journey to the heart of Buenos Aires, through a labyrinth of images and imaginary passages. The work Pasajes I, chosen to dialogue with the exhibition devoted to Alberto Giacometti, explores a reality turned into fiction, that of Giacometti's L'Homme qui marche, who embodies both a fragility and a determination that the character in this video seems to share, even if doubt remains.  "My work explores the boundaries between reality and fiction," says the artist. It is precisely this boundary that he seeks to cross here, in an allusion to the passing of time and the relativity of space, not without reference to the research of the German philosopher Walter Benjamin. He represents the troubling condition of the walking human, moving from one place to another, always the same, with exact, firm steps as if he knew precisely where he was going, but at the same time seeming to drift through a labyrinthine space.

BIENALSUR
BIENALSUR is a wide-ranging initiative focusing on art, culture and contemporary thought. Organised since 2015 from the southern corner of the planet, BIENALSUR is the International Biennial of Contemporary Art of the South supported by the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero (UNTREF) in Argentina.

Decentralised, democratic, horizontal and humanist, this biennial takes a different approach to the themes of today's world. From MUNTREF (the UNTREF Museum, housed in the Hotel des Immigrants in Buenos Aires) to Tokyo, BIENALSUR traces a new cartography of contemporary art, stretching over 18,370 kilometres.
This event simultaneously connects art spaces, creators, audiences and communities from every continent. Since 2017, more than 1,800 international artists have participated in the three editions across the globe. Unprecedented in its approach, BIENALSUR includes works and projects that are the result of open international calls, free and without determination of the subject to be addressed. Artists and curators are invited to consider specific proposals. From this call for projects emerge the curatorial paths and main axes of each edition. Projects are selected solely on the basis of their conceptual and aesthetic quality.

For this 4th edition, BIENALSUR is pursuing the project of shaping other paths for art and culture, constantly seeking new logics of artistic and social circulation on a local and global scale, asserting the right to culture and diversity. For six months, artists, curators, institutions and communities from the four corners of the globe will be joining forces with us to strengthen our actions and take up the challenges posed by the contemporary world.

Anibal Y. Jozami, Managing Director of BIENALSUR
Diana B. Wechsler, Artistic Director of BIENALSUR

foto: Renata D'Almeida

Sebastián Díaz Morales is an Argentinian artist born in 1975 in Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina. He studied at the Universidad del Cine de Antin in Argentina, the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam and Le Fresnoy in Roubaix. He currently lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Sebastián Díaz Morales' work is rooted in a particular conception of reality, shaped by his own history and the living conditions and landscape of his birthplace, Comodoro Rivadivia, an industrial town on the Atlantic coast, in a rugged region between the Atlantic Ocean and the Patagonian desert in southern Argentina. Questioning the belief in a single, unified reality, the artist calls into question this conception of reality and reality itself, whether it be the landscape, the urban environment or the socio-political context. This reflection is embodied in his cinematographic practice, in which the camera functions not as a means of representing and faithfully recording what is observed, but as a means of questioning and appropriating reality.

His work has been exhibited in institutions such as the Tate Modern (London), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Stedelijk Museum and De Appel (Amsterdam) and the Miro Foundation (Barcelona). His work can be found in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, the Tate Modern, the Fundación Jumex (Mexico), the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation (Turin), the Lemaître Collection, the Constantini Collection (Buenos Aires), the Fondation Pinault (Paris), Sammlung-Goetz (Munich) and the Fundacion de Arte Moderna, Museo Berardo (Lisbon). In 2009, he received a scholarship from the Guggenheim Museum.

Sebastián Díaz Morales. Pasajes I, Focus BIENALSUR as part of the exhibition Le temps de Giacometti (1946-1966)

Curated by Diana Wechsler, Artistic Director BIENALSUR