Berlin-based curators Cosmin Costinaș and Inti Guerro have been tapped as artistic directors the 2024 Biennale of Sydney. Their appointment marks only the second time in the Biennale’s forty-nine-year history that the event has been jointly led. The twenty-fourth iteration of the Biennale, Australia’s largest contemporary arts event, is to take place March 9–June 24 in the harborfront capital of Australia’s New South Wales territory: No venues or theme have yet been announced.
Costinaș and Guerro are longtime friends who have worked together on several projects while maintaining individual curatorial practices. The pair jointly curated the 2018 Dakar Biennale in Senegal; the 2016–17 traveling exhibition “Soil and Stones, Souls and Songs,” which appeared in Manila, Hong Kong, and Bangkok; and the widely touted 2013 show “A Journal of the Plague Year,” at Para Site and Sheung Wan Civic Centre Exhibition Hall in Hong Kong. Separately, Costinaș curated the Romanian pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, which opened April 23; he was artistic director Kathmandu Triennale 2022 and curatorial adviser for the 2022 Aichi Triennale. From 2011 to 2022, he served as the director of Para Site. Guerrero, who curated the 2018 EVA International biennial exhibition in Ireland, is an instructor in the curatorial studies program at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts-KASK in Ghent, Belgium; he previously served, from 2016 to 2020, as the Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator at Tate, London.
“I am thrilled to be working with Cosmin Costinaș and Inti Guerrero—highly respected curators both together and independently with a deep understanding of the international and Australian creative landscapes,” said Biennale CEO Barbara Moore. “The Biennale of Sydney is a participatory platform designed to present the best in contemporary art from around the world, inviting discussion and shared learning about the joys and challenges of our time.
Costinaș and Guerro noted that while their plans for the exhibition remain nebulous at this early stage, they hoped to bring into play the “multiplicity of visual regimes that form the lived experience of most people in the world.” The duality of their respective worldviews will likely be brought to bear as well, though contention between the two friends seems unlikely. Still, a lively frisson may infuse the curatorial proceedings. “If you don’t argue with somebody it means you don’t respect that person,” Guerrero told the Sydney Morning Herald. “You should involve yourself emotionally and intellectually.”
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