The 24th Biennale of Sydney

Curatorial Statement

The 24th Biennale of Sydney works across time periods, beyond the borders separating cultural practices rooted in different genealogies, and from all continents. The edition owes a profound debt to the rich heritage of what is known today as Australia, especially to the struggles and practices in which First Nations communities and migrants have played key roles.

The artists’ practices are firmly rooted in diverse communities and artistic vocabularies, inviting audiences to bear witness to multiple histories. The exhibition carries hope to resist the mainstream mindsets of perpetual crisis that often leads to inaction.

The 24th Biennale of Sydney proposes celebration as both a method and a source of joy, produced in common and broadly shared, drawing inspiration from histories of queer coming-together to thrive in spite of it all. It invokes a spirit of abundance and generosity as powerful political tools. This edition revisits legacies of collective resistance, strength, and exuberance, while celebrating the exhibition as a carnival of rays and radiance, aptly titled Ten Thousand Suns.

When Australian artist collective VNS Matrix crawled out of the cyberswamp in 1991 their first conceptual and political act was to coin the term “cyberfeminism”. Three decades after this galvanising opening move, the iconic collective’s “singular and historically exceptional” works will be exhibited in the 24th Biennale of Sydney at White Bay Power Station. The Biennale’s theme, ‘Ten Thousand Suns’, celebrates “solar and radiant forms of resistance that affirm collective possibilities around a future that is not only possible, but necessary to be lived in joy and plenitude.” The work of VNS Matrix exemplifies cyberfeminism’s cooperative anticapitalist nature. The group’s humorous irreverence, vividly retrofuturist imagery and poetic exhortations mark VNS Matrix as an essential international reference point for cyberfeminism.

The inclusion of VNS Matrix in the 24th Biennale of Sydney is made possible with generous assistance from the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body and the Government of South Australia through Arts South Australia.