'Bestiary', by Carlos Casas and Filipa Ramos, Ramon Llull winning project for the 60th Venice Art Biennale

The Bestiary project, by the artist Carlos Casas and the curator Filipa Ramos, has won the selection process, called by the Ramon Llull Institute, for the participation of Catalan culture in the Eventi Collaterali program of the 60th International Exhibition of Art of the Venice Biennale. From a current point of view, which talks about ecology and the intelligence of nature through multiple perspectives, Bestiary pays tribute to the medieval classic Disputa de l'ase, a Catalan text written between 1417 and 1418 by the Mallorcan author Anselm Turmeda (1355-1423), considered, along with Ramon Llull, one of the founders of Catalan literature. Bestiary celebrates the natural landscapes of Catalonia, and investigates life and memory, interspecies relations, conservation and creation.

The project will be embodied in an audiovisual exhibition that will immerse visitors in cycles of images and sounds of nature, recorded in several natural parks in Catalonia. Bestiari will also carry out a public research program, curated by Pol Capdevila, professor in the Department of Humanities at the Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona), which will allow establishing dialogue with the local and international community committed to a new vision of the natural and animal life.

The committee of experts that has chosen the proposal is made up of professionals with a wide and recognized international background. The committee was chaired by Elvira Dyangani Ose , director of the Contemporary Art Museum of Barcelona (MACBA), and the members were Marko Daniel , director of the Joan Miró Foundation (Barcelona), Ruth Estévez , director and chief curator of Amant Foundation, New York and co-curator of the 34th São Paulo Biennial, Oriol Fontdevila , researcher and professor, curator of the Catalan exhibition at the Venice Art Biennale 2022, Ingrid Guardiola , director of Bòlit - Contemporary Art Center of Girona and Andrea Lissoni , artistic director of Haus der Kunst (Munich).

The committee explained that "The Bestiary proposal by artist Carlos Casas and curator Filipa Ramos has been chosen to show Catalan culture at the next Venice Biennale, in one of the most successful calls since this participation began. The project, which takes as its reference one of the most beautiful texts of 15th century Catalan literature, is an invitation to delve into the soundscapes that emanate from Catalan natural parks in temporal synchrony. Bestiary is an allegory of contemporary worlds emerging from displacements of anthropocentrism and ocularcentrism, while emphasizing what notions such as citizenship and belonging might mean from a multispecies perspective.”

The artistic director of the 2024 Venice Art Biennale is Adriano Pedrosa , who has chosen Foreigners Everywhere as his central theme. According to the Brazilian curator, who is also artistic director of the São Paulo Museum of Art, this title has a double meaning " First of all, wherever you go and wherever you are, you will always meet foreigners: they/we are in everywhere. Secondly, that no matter where you are, you are always, truly and at heart, a foreigner . According to Carlos Casas, with Bestiari " we bring the natural context to Pedrosa's reflections and insert the concept of species into the artistic and curatorial investigation of the meaning of Foreigners Everywhere ."

The selection process, opened in June by the Ramon Llull Institute, has been one of the busiest in recent years, with the reception of 29 projects. As in previous editions, the IRL will present the winning proposal to the curator of the Biennale who, in the coming months, will announce whether it includes Bestiary in the Eventi Collaterali.

The IRL has been producing and organizing the participation of Catalan culture in the Eventi Collaterali of the Venice Art Biennale since 2009. On this occasion, it will be the eighth time it has presented a project and until now it has always had the approval of the commissioner of this important international event.