Various venues, Liverpool
At the 12th Liverpool Biennial, bold works from Isa do Rosário, Binta Diaw, Torkwase Dyson and more focus on colonialism and the slave trade. But the aim is to spiritually awaken rather than shock
The bloody legacy of the transatlantic slave trade looms large over Liverpool, which was the slave-trading capital of Britain by 1740. Many of the works featured in the 12th edition of the Liverpool Biennial, mostly by Black, Asian and Indigenous artists, appear to be haunted by the city’s dark past. Take Brazilian artist Isa do Rosário’s bright blue textile work Dance with Death on the Atlantic Sea. The long fabric, suspended from the ceiling, features patches of sketch-like paintings. The visceral brushstrokes evoke a sense of frenzy and close inspection reveals that the black dots and pieces of fabric represent Black people who lost their lives during the slave trade.
The title and theme of the 12th edition is uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things. The word uMoya in the isiZulu language means spirit, breath, air, climate and wind. Independent Cape Town-based curator Khanyisile Mbongwa has set out to create “a call for ancestral and indigenous forms of knowledge, wisdom and healing”. She headed South Africa’s Stellenbosch Triennale in 2020 and previously worked as a curator for performative practices at the Norval Foundation. Liverpool Biennial director Sam Lackey said Mbongwa’s appointment was down to her “longstanding curatorial concerns around care and repair”.
