Curated by Hou Hanru

In a sprawling look at how artists are reinventing the everyday, veteran biennial curator Hou Hanru assembles some fifty artists and collectives in four central Lyon venues. Sarkis presents a newspaper-scattered agora complete with invited speakers, Shilpa Gupta has constructed an automated gate that will progressively destroy a wall, and the Xijing Men declare their invented, eponymous city an independent state. Hou also takes on the challenge of addressing communities outside city limits: A pair of Lyon suburbs, infamous sites of past police violence and anti-immigrant attacks, host in situ projects by Bik Van der Pol, Eko Nugroho, and Robert Milin, all of whom have completed local residencies. Titled “The Spectacle of the Everyday,” this year’s biennale proposes that, worldwide, artists are taking inspiration from the Situationist strategy of dérive and gaining new critical force in a time of grassroots globalization.

— Jian-Xing Too