The 5th edition of the Art Encounters Biennial My Rhino is not a Myth focuses on the intersection between art, science and fictions, by exploring their potential to reclaim reality as a mesh of complex processes. In between scientific explorations and imaginative speculation, it touches upon stories of the unknown and the drive to change, adapt or subvert.
About location:
Built in 1927, the city’s old tram depot is a living testimony and expression of the city’s progressive spirit. There are plans to transform this space into a Center for Art, Technology, and Experimentation. However, renovation work is still pending.
About Exhibition:
In 1515, Albrecht Dürer created his renowned Rhinocerus in response to a strange encounter: the first rhino since antiquity to travel to the European continent. But Dürer had never seen the depicted animal. Ganda, by its Gujarati name, drowned before reaching its destination. Its voyage around the world mapped a geopolitical trajectory and reminds us that less-known stories of exploitation and violence overshadowed the histories of exploration and discovery. Engaging with other works of fiction, such as Eugène Ionesco’s Theatre of the Absurd entitled Rhinocéros, the biennial follows the stories inspired by Ganda, reclaiming the imaginative play of science and art in an entangled world marked by environmental and societal transformations.
The Society of Public Transport Timișoara is a space of contradictions. It echoes Timișoara’s history as the first electrified city in Europe, but also its stories of uprisings and conflicts. Meanwhile, nature takes over the relics of its past, old tram cars and iron-clad rails, and the industrial sites become possible hosts for alternative visions of dark science fiction and new mythologies. They emphasise the fascinating side of collapsing worlds by looking beyond narrative boundaries and unveiling other ways of coexistence, be it at the edge of an event-horizon after an atomic dispersion or at a point of no return, in a shelter at the end of history.
Artists: Megan Dominescu, Sahil Naik
Curatorial team: Cristina Bută, Monica Dănilă, Edith Lázár, Ann Mbuti, Adrian Notz, Cristina Stoenescu, Georgia Țidorescu
INFO POINT – Art Encounters Foundation, Bd. Take Ionescu 46C
The program of all exhibition spaces:
Wednesday – Sunday, 12:00 – 20:00
National Museum of Art Timisoara:
Wednesday – Sunday, 13:00 – 21:00
*Free entry, unless otherwise stated
**This program may undergo changes in the following period, please check the updates on our website at: 2023.artencounters.ro
*** For appointments: contact@artencounters.ro / 0792 310 052