All the World's Futures

Rather than one overarching theme, the 56th International Art Exhibition of the Biennale is informed by a layer of intersecting filters. These filters are a constellation of parameters that circumscribe multiple ideas which will be touched upon to imagine and realize a diversity of practices. All the World s Futures employs as a filter the historical trajectory that the Biennale itself, over the course of its one hundred and twenty years existence has run over. A filter through which to reflect on both the current state of things and the appearance of things.
At its core is the notion of the exhibition as a stage, where historical and counter-historical projects are explored. Within this framework the main aspects of the 56th Biennale Exhibition solicit and privilege new proposals and works conceived specifically by invited artists, filmmakers, choreographers, performers, composers, and writers.

Okwui Enwezor is a curator, art critic, editor, and writer. Since 2011 he has been the Director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich. He has been Artistic Director of the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale (1996-98), of documenta 11 in Kassel (1998-2002), of the Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de Sevilla (2005-07), of the 7th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea (2008), and of the Triennal d'Art Contemporain of Paris (2012). He's held academic positions as Dean of Academic Affairs of the San Francisco Art Institute (2005-09), as Visiting Professor at the Universities of Pittsburgh Illinois, and Columbia University, New York. In spring 2012 he was appointed as Visiting Professor in Art History at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.