Europe DayEurope
Day'24

9 May

Launched by the European Cultural Foundation in 2021, the European Pavilion hosts art and culture initiatives that imagine a sustainable and desirable Europe. The aim is to provide a space for artistic debates and productions that highlight the challenges but also the opportunities of Europe as a cultural community and living fabric.

In these times of shattered realities and uncertainty, it is to the arts and culture that we turn to find understanding and open up niches where people can come together. We need a new lexicon, a new vocabulary and a new understanding to be able to live together in peace and harmony with the natural environment. Arts and culture can provide these new narratives and imagery. For this we need a shelter, a safe space: The European Pavilion is exactly that.

In 2022, the seven organisations that are part of The European Pavilion are presenting various programmes that tackle urgent European topics that range from the future of food and the issue of waste in contemporary societies, the state of democracy and the urgency to listen to the unheard and the marginalised voices.

Throughout Spring 2022, you can join the European Pavilion in Athens, Palermo, Venice, and online.

online platform
Public presentationon 9 May at 20h30
De Balie, Amsterdam

Antiwarcoalition.art is an open online platform that collects statements against war and dehumanization created by artists from around the world. Driven by the Russian aggression and war against Ukraine, this platform offers an opportunity to protest against war, massacres, and inhuman punishment of civilians, dictatorship, and patriarchal power structures. The aim of antiwarcoalition.art is not only to present the artworks online but also to distribute them offline, through different events and presentations, and thus to bring the voices of artists to public spaces and art institutions internationally.

21st of April at 18h
Bruno, Calle Lunga San Barnaba, Dorsoduro 2729, Venezia

Within the framework of the Bookbiennale, the EUPavilion is launching the book they publish as part of Eight proposals, a project for which eight artistic and architectural practices were invited in 2021 to imagine the first European Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The project provided an opportunity to ask what new representative languages are ​​needed to define the identity of a supranational organization in a state of continuous crisis and perpetual construction like the European Union. In the light of the current debate on further European integration, a reconsideration of the spaces where this process happens is of critical importance for the definition of a democratic and inclusive public realm.

22 April at 12h
Don Orione Centro Congressi, Venice
Livestream online

For the first programme of their Drift Pavilion, iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) raises the question of, ‘What is nation?’ with artists Sonia Boyce, Zineb Sedira, Alberta Whittle, Stan Douglas and Yuki Kihara chaired by iniva artistic director Sepake Angiama.

This conversation opens up the possibility to think beyond boundaries and borders of land and water, thinking through what is carried in the body to m/otherlands, to disperse diasporas, forge post-national imaginaries, identities, communities and formations of new fluid subjectivities. We ask the artists presenting in the 59th Venice Biennale, “what does it mean to represent a nation?”

Opening on 27 May 2022
State of Concept, Athens

As part of the European Pavilion, State of Concept Athens has invited the Temporary Academy of Arts (Elpida Karaba, Despina Zefkili, Yota Ioannidou, Vangelis Vlahos) to develop the Waste/d Pavilion, which will unfold through a series of ‘episodes’, focusing on the relation between waste and labour, the body, ecology and language. Episode 2 will launch on May 27th with a solo exhibition of Oliver Ressler curated by iLiana Fokianaki.

Online
Launch on 9 May 2022 at 20h30
De Balie, Amsterdam

On the occasion of Europe Day, L’Internationale is launching the Democracy Pavilion for Europe Online: a platform that encourages ongoing and open debate and the recognition of art and museums as tools for experimentation and critical analysis of cultural and political Europe. This platform follows a series of workshops conducted by the various museums of the L’International confederation, as well as the international conference it organised in Ljubljana from 9 to 11 March 2022.

31 May – 5 June 2022
Chiesa del Carmine Maggiore and Complesso Monumentale Santa Chiara, Palermo

Two years ago, we saw the monuments of colonial rule being painted over and torn down during protests across Europe; a few months ago, two museums with the largest collections of African art returned their Benin bronzes to Nigeria. Now that we are entering a new era of postcolonial debate, GROUP50:50 and studio rizoma invite artists, activists and thinkers from Europe and Africa to Palermo to lay the groundwork for a broad transnational restitution movement and to think critically about the relationship between Europe and Africa. In a series of talks and artistic interventions produced in collaboration with local protagonists of the postcolonial debate and members of various African communities, we present and discuss artistic and political practices that redefine both African and European identities and reframing transcontinental dialogue and cooperation.