The 18th edition of the Biennale of Contemporary Art draws on the traboules—those distinctive passageways running through Lyon’s courtyards and buildings—to explore how one moves from one mode of perception to another, from one collective dream to another. Lyon, a crossroads of trade and industry, becomes the starting point for a reflection on the economy, approached here as the set of processes through which interdependent beings acquire, transform, and circulate what sustains their existence.
Drawing on the writings of Walter Benjamin and Robert Filliou's Principes d’économie poétique, Catherine Nichols develops a project situated between critique and invention. While Benjamin reveals how capitalism produces a collective dream whose continuity must be interrupted, Filliou proposes that other forms of economy can be explored through artistic and social practices. The Biennale focuses on those moments when the apparent stability of the present begins to fracture, and other imaginaries become possible.
Across film, sculpture, performance and sound, Rossella Biscotti addresses historical narratives and systems of power. By bringing together individual testimonies and institutional archives, she constructs narratives that examine political, social, and economic dynamics, having notably engaged with Italian political history, questions of gender, climate issues, and the politics of resource extraction. Her practice operates as a form of critical reconstruction, drawing attention to marginalised or overlooked histories, while exploring the relationships between memory, testimony, and the production of collective knowledge.
The Biennale unfolds across multiple sites in Lyon, including Les Grandes Locos, the Musée des Tissus et des Arts décoratifs, and macLYON.
The Biennale will take place in Lyon from 19 September - 13 December 2026