Luleåbiennalen 2024

Luleåbiennalen 2024 – On the threshold of 1:1 gathers positions at the intersection between Art and Architecture, shedding light on the resilient practices and empowering alternatives emerging from local-global contexts of profound transition and transformation.

The Biennial took place 2 March – 26 May 2024 in the northern Norrbotten region of Sweden in the cities of Boden, Kiruna, Luleå and Messaure. Across eight sites the artistic directors Aude Christel Mgba and Bruno Alves de Almeida curated sixteen artists and art and architecture collectives, investigating the drastic changes in Norrbotten’s built and natural environments and relating them to analogous contexts worldwide.

Norrbotten has long been in a continuous state of drastic change caused by processes such as century-old resource extraction, urban development, environmental degradation, new industries, social segregation, among others. The curatorial framework On the threshold of 1:1 provides a reflection on the context and processes within Norrbotten and emphasizes its connections to other geographies and communities across the globe, fostering interchanges that might provide new possibilities.

In collaboration with the artistic directors, Konstframjandet Norrbotten (The People’s Movement for Art Promotion), and local partners, we developed a visual identity based on the concept of the threshold. A threshold designates a place of transition, of mediation between different spaces, positions, and scales.

Norrbotten, a part of Sápmi, the ancestral land of the indigenous Sami people, has long been at the threshold of unprecedented change and uncertainty. Transformative shifts continue to compound and unfold from histories of extraction, nation building, geo-political dynamics, as well as contemporary industries, politics, and horizons.

Importantly then, the threshold exists beyond reductive dichotomies, and is rather the multiplicity of liminal spaces entangled across scales and stories of transition and transformation. They are the spaces through which forms of resilience, reinvention, and new/old practices are reimagined and enacted, profoundly reshaping the landscape and broader horizons.

Our process began with extensive dialogue with local community partners and cultural workers, listening to their experiences of Norrbotten’s past and present, as well as discussing the biennial’s history and how audiences have responded to previous editions. Their perspectives informed our visual approach to the concept and communication strategy, considering the importance of the railway, the everyday presence and histories of heavy industries, the particular weather and urban conditions, and indigenous knowledges and voices which reconfigure contemporary senses of spatiality.

Holding multiple spatial and temporal scales through a language that expresses both urgency and slowness, the visual identity and custom typeface extends through digital and printed communication, out of home promotion, exhibition spaces and signage, press and social media, and the biennial’s new website.