The 15th Baltic Triennial edition will be curated by Tom Engels and Maya Tounta. Earlier this year, Engels was selected to lead the Triennial from an invitation-based competition initiated by the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius. After his appointment, Engels invited Tounta to join him as co-curator.
Maya Tounta is a curator and writer who is currently based in Athens, Greece. She is currently the director of Akwa Ibom, a nonprofit exhibition space which she co-founded with Otobong Nkanga in 2019. With Gerda Paliušytė, Gediminas G. Akstinas and Liudvikas Buklys, Tounta co-founded the art space Montos Tattoo in Vilnius. From 2021 to 2022, she was Art Director at e-flux journal.
Tom Engels is a Brussels- and Graz-based curator whose focus integrates art and performance. Since 2021 he has bee the artistic director of Grazer Kunstverein, where he presented artists including Sandra Lahire, Celeste Burlina, Iris Touliatou, Maria Toumazou, Marija Olšauskaitė and Miloš Trakilović. Engels has also widely collaborated with choreographers including Alexandra Bachzetsis for Documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel, Mette Ingvartsen during steirischer herbst in Graz, among others.
The Triennial is expected to take place in mid-2024 in the reopened main building of the Contemporary Art Centre.
27 July: The 15th Baltic Triennial will be titled Same Day, after a poem written by the Greek poet Emerson in 1984 which forms a part of Emerson’s Songs Without Music, a previously unpublished collection of poems and lyrics found in the archives of Greek photographer George Tourkovasilis. The Triennial is slated to take place 6 September – 12 January, 2025
‘Every day we wake up to intimations of a script,’ the curatorial text writes. ‘A script that feels strangely familiar but is not entirely legible. Sunrise presents a variation on a theme that is violently pre-sanctioned. Joyful or sad, a day always invites revolt – an inclination to live a life unscripted. There are days of compliance and days of rebellion and there are days of truce. Most days culminate in a draw or a defeat. More rarely in a victory. Each day is its own wondrous struggle.’
Participants of the Triennial include Rey Akdogan, Nick Bastis, Kazimierz Bendkowski, Geta Brătescu, Matt Browning, Tom Burr, Elene Chantladze, Josef Dabernig, Aria Dean & Laszlo Horvath, Gintaras Didžiapetris, Jason Dodge, Kevin Jerome Everson, Simone Forti, Michèle Graf & Selina Grüter, Villu Jõgeva, Tarik Kiswanson, Michael Kleine, Běla Kolářová, Jiří Kovanda, Kitty Kraus, Bradley Kronz, Kaarel Kurismaa, Simon Lässig, Ian Law, Klara Lidén, Jolanta Marcolla, Ugnė Nakaitė with Urtė Jarmuškaitė & Pranas Gustainis, Elena Narbutaitė, Ewa Partum, Matthew Langan-Peck, Julie Peeters & BILL, Cameron Rowland, Margaret Salmon, Stephen Sutcliffe, Tanya Syed, Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet, Raša Todosijević, Thanasis Totsikas, Maria Toumazou, Rosemarie Trockel, Christos Tzivelos, Mare Vint, Tanja Widmann, Marina Xenofontos and Eiko Yamazawa.
