ArchiveExhibition
Liverpool Biennial - uMoya: The sacred Return of Lost Things
10 Jun-17 Sep 2023
The Bluecoat
Liverpool L1 3BX
Never Forget, 2021. Credit: Photo by Lance Gerber
Overview
Liverpool Biennial 2023 returns to the Bluecoat with an exciting exhibition featuring installation, video and more by four artists.
uMoya: The sacred Return of Lost Things is the 12th edition of Liverpool Biennial and is curated by Khaniyisile Mbongwa.
This year the biennial addresses the history and temperament of the city of Liverpool and is a call for ancestral and indigenous forms of knowledge, wisdom and healing. In the isiZulu language, ‘uMoya’ means spirit, breath, air, climate and wind.
The festival explores the ways in which people and objects have the potential to manifest power as they move across the world, while acknowledging the continued losses of the past. It draws a line from the ongoing Catastrophes caused by colonialism towards an insistence on being truly Alive.
At the Bluecoat, four artists are featured in our galleries: Nicholas Galanin presents an intimate film following conversations between the artist and his son; Raisa Kabir’s installation includes textiles and films which examine the cultural politics of cloth, labour and embodied geographies; Kent Chan’s Hot House creates a humid environment that brings into question the displacement of artefacts, artworks and objects; And Benoît Piéron combines joyful textiles and plants in an installation stemming from a childhood spent in hospitals and the resultant politicisation of his body.
