Kimberly Drew’s 2024: international biennials, ChatGPT oblivion and election doom

Get your visas, passports and diaries up to code because 2024 is here and there’s much to do. This year, curators and cultural councils will open the Lagos Biennial, Dakar Biennale, Venice Biennale, Whitney Biennial, Istanbul Biennial, and Gwangju Biennale to name a few. In a time when we so desperately need it, we’re going to see the culmination of years – and I mean YEARS – of scholarship, fundraising, studio visiting, registraring and art handling to present what’s next and notable in art and culture. We’re going to see the labour that ChatGPT truly wants to, but simply could never do. This is a time for nuance, creativity and flexing all the muscles that only art, artists and artworks are capable of accomplishing.

And as an American during an election year, my eyes are fixed on the horizon – ready for literally everything but the doom and gloom of what’s to come. We are in horrifically, ugly times. We are living (a privilege in itself) in a time of ‘sensitivity’ and division. It’s impossible and maybe even irresponsible to begin an arts column about the ritual of seeing without this acknowledgement.

Grief – personal and global – is clinging tightly to each of us no matter what our engagement is with culture. Whether we look away, or inward, grief is present and if we aren’t careful it will corrode us. Of course, I don’t want to be delusional and say that seeing art is a solution. It’s just not. Any art critic who attempts to conflate art and freedom is not to be trusted. This said, art is powerful in its potential. Art and artists aid us in making sense of a senseless world. When we are looking, touching, listening, and engaging, we can more abundantly find a way out of the vile spaces that the algorithmic gaze has carefully crafted for us. We need more and I’m hopeful that this coming year’s exhibitions will offer this.

I got the teeniest sneak peek into this feeling in the nights before the holiday season. I was invited by my new friend, curator Yvonne Mpwo, to a small celebration ahead of the forthcoming Congo Biennale, which will be held in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2025. The dinner buzzed and conversations were had in a creole of French and English, accompanied by mezcal sangria and Congolese dancing. If you’re following the news, you may be aware of the myriad issues impacting the Democratic Republic of The Congo – many of which are representations of the impact of colonisation and exploitation from the West. Sitting with Yvonne, Vitshois Mwilambwe Bondo (the Biennale’s founder and artistic director), and friends, we were able to make some sense not just of what’s impacting the country, but the reality of what it means to be Congolese right now. IRL and hashtag-free conversations about art, culture and so much more. I needed that shit. We need that shit! We owe each other the permission to feel, see, ask and to take necessary and informed action. Biennials — at their best — offer a space for us to reside within ideas. They can grant us new ways of seeing. I’m ready, are you?