The exhibition "Re:visited" is one of the events of the official Riga 2014 European Capital of Culture programme, and will be on show at the Riga Art Space from 14 March to 27 April.

The international exhibition Re: visited, organised by the LCCA, questions the current role of art biennials. Solvita Krese, the event's curator and director of the LCCA, has selected art works by various international artists recently represented at the most significant art biennials and shows abroad, such as Manifesta, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, the Venice Biennial, the Documenta exhibition in Kassel, the Istanbul Biennial and others.

Art history today is being written by exhibitions, which have become an important medium through which contemporary art is articulated and positioned. One of the exhibition formats that have actively spread worldwide over the last decades is the biennale. Next to its semantic meaning, which indicates an event that takes place every other year, the word also describes an internationally visible, large-scale art mega-show akin to the founder of the tradition, the Venice Biennale.

How to approach the advance of the relatively new phenomenon of the biennale? As an element of the entertainment or tourist industry that feeds the consumer society's demand for culture festivalisation, a new Disneyland which deforms the logical development of art processes? Or, on the contrary, can biennales become platforms for creating experimental exhibitions and provide an alternative to museums, thus allowing more flexible development of art processes and providing immediate response to the latest tendencies and events?

The curator explains the concept of show: 'Re: visited is not an attempt to create a puzzle or a mosaic, a kind of an anthology of biennials or an overview of the latest art events. The exhibition is a subjective view that tends to zoom in on otherness reflected in various forms of knowledge. Different experiences rooted in a multiplicity of cultures and social textures may create tension between affiliation and non-affiliation, between inclusion and exclusion or extrusion.'

Participating artists: Umida Akhmedova (Uzbekistan), Kristīne Alksne (Latvia) and Emmanuel Pidre (Germany), Pawel Althamer (Poland), Petra Bauer (Sweden), Meschac Gaba (Benin/Netherlands), Igor Grubić (Croatia), Rana Hamadeh (Lebanon/Netherlands), Jumaadi (Indonesia), Eva Kotátková (Czech Republic), Nicolas Kozakis & Raoul Vaneigem (Belgium), Ann Lislegaard (Norway), Jumana Manna (USA/Germany) & Sille Storihle (Norway), José Antonio Vega Macotela (Mexico), Mark Manders (Netherlands), Paulo Nazareth (Brazil), Selma and Sofiane Ouissi (Tunisia), Konstanze Schmitt (Germany) and Corin Sworn (the UK).

The Riga Art Space is located at 3 Kungu Street, Riga.

The exhibition is organised in collaboration with the foundation Riga 2014 and LLC Rīgas Nami. It is supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Riga, TNT. Media partners: Rīgas Laiks Magazine, Visual Arts Magazine "Studija", Veto Magazine, Arterritory.com, RigaThisWeek.com, Easyget.lv, EchoGoneWrong.com.

Image credits: Jumana Manna & Sille Storihle; video 'The Goodness Regime', 2013.