Artists from Over 50 Countries to Attend 13th Havana Biennial

Over 300 artists and individual and collective projects from 52 countries will participate in the 13th Havana Biennial, scheduled from from April 12 to May 12 in the Cuban capital, organizers confirmed on Saturday.

The event, recognized as one of the most important in the world, makes contemporary artistic thought and evolution visible, encourages interaction among creators, curators, experts and institutions, and boosts sustainable development without distancing from the propositional nature of each artistic work.

The Biennial, created 35 years ago, is committed to fostering young artists' works and their new forms of conceptualization and production with multiple proposals of high aesthetic value.

The 13th edition of the meeting, entitled The Building of the Possible, will feature the curatorial list of nine National Plastic Arts Prizes in Cuba, including Manuel Mendive, Roberto Fabelo, Rene Francisco Rodriguez, Jose Manuel Fors, Jose Villa Soberon, Pedro de Oraa, Pedro Pablo Oliva, Eduardo Ponjuan and Jose A. Toirac.

Important foreign intellectuals such as Ticio Escobar, from Paraguay, and Boaventura de Souza Santos, from Portugal, the Senegalese critic Babacar Mbow and the Colombian writer Carlos Jauregui will prestige the event.

The main venues of the event include the Wifredo Lam Contemporary Art Center, the National Museum of Fine Arts, the Alicia Alonso Grand Theater of Havana, the University of the Arts (ISA), Havana's seafront drive (Malecon) with its project Behind the Wall, the Chullima Workshop, the Factoria Habana gallery, and the Center for the Development of Visual Arts, among other institutions.

The Biennial will transcend the limits of Havana for the first time and will reach national and international entities based in Matanzas, Pinar del Rio, Cienfuegos and Camagüey provinces, in order to establish a participatory-reflective interaction among groups and innovative practices, institutions and diverse spaces for artistic promotion.