A terrible beauty is born
Guest Curator : Victoria Noorthoorn
Artistic Director : Thierry Raspail
Guest Curator : Victoria Noorthoorn
Artistic Director : Thierry Raspail
The title of the next Biennale de Lyon, A Terrible Beauty Is Born, is a verse from the poem Easter, 1916 written by W.B. Yeats on September of that year on the general uprising by which the Irish claimed emancipation from the British. At first sight, the poem could be read as celebrating the martyrs that gave their life for the cause of independence. Yet upon further scrutiny, it becomes clear that the attitude of the speaker is one of perplexity and doubt. The poem shifts uneasily between affirmation, question and negation. It is, fundamentally, at war with itself.
As such, the title is more a methodological tool rather than a theme per se. It enables the project to explore the force of paradox and contradiction, tension and ambivalence, and to address the state of urgency in the world and in the arts today. Articulated through a series of parcours or narratives, the exhibition intends to address the density of the present as well as the power of the imaginary, the visionary and the hallucinatory.
