The Lyon Biennial presents its tenth edition and is already considered one of the major international art events. In this edition, the famous curator Hou Hanru, of Chinese origin and a regular in this kind of events, has selected the title The Spectacle of the Everyday, thus closing the trilogy of biennials devoted in general terms to the topic of Temporality. For Hanru, this spectacular condition of contemporary life not only has an alienating impact, but is part of a capitalist system to control the production of images and representation, which is inherent to our existence since we communicate and we even feel and imagine through it. Hanru states that art is one of the few realms having the critical capacity to subvert it and to offer a better future. This explains the importance attached to the everyday, one of the few freedom spaces that may still exist and where the minimum strategies become effective. As the curator suggests, a spectacular event, such as a contemporary art biennial, paradoxically contributes to making these processes visible.
In this Spectacle of the Everyday, Hanru has included works by two of the most renowned Spanish artists today: Dora García (Valladolid, 1965) and Eulàlia Valldosera (Villafranca del Penedés, 1963).
Dora García, with her work Steal this book and her performance Adaptation, creates situations in public spaces taking as a starting point very open scripts interpreted, in its double sense, by actors who usually have very little or no experience at all. Furthermore, the situations created usually provoke the interaction with the spectator, who thus becomes one more actor in the action.
The installations by Eulàlia Valldosera, a medium where she usually develops her work, analyze the feminine archetypes by exploring the domestic atmospheres where these are suppose to take place in order to unveil their construction aspects. This time, the following works have been included: The Kitchen, La Farola and The Period.