PNCA plans art biennale

Islamabad : The Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA) has planned the Islamabad Art Biennale through leading national and international artists in February next year.

The 15-day event will be hosted in several locations in Islamabad engaging an audience of 500,000 from diverse backgrounds and ages and will feature artists from at least 10 countries, including the US, and 100 Pakistani and 30 international artists.

It is meant to introduce new art forms and practices through leading national and international artists, foster relationships through cultural dialogue and exchange of ideas, promote the cultural significance of Islamabad, Rawalpindi and its surroundings and promote creative entrepreneurship and using art to empower the communities by creating economic opportunities.

According to PNCA, the contemporary art scene in Pakistan is generally mindful of this rich and highly diversified cultural resource which distinguishes it in South Asia hence leading to an international recognition and acknowledgement over the last three decades.

The Islamabad Biennale 2019 is a multi-disciplinary platform to extend an aesthetic dialogue across cultures involving all possible strands of visual and performing arts including architecture and cinema.

It is a project of the PNCA and Hunerkada College of Visual and Performing Art, lead consortium of institutions committed to the promotion and propagation of art and culture.

The biennale is being co-curated by Director General PNCA Jamal Shah and Dr Vicky Clark along with a curatorial team of distinguished professionals from visual and performing art.

Islamabad Biennale-19 aims to bring Pakistan's vibrant young art scene and its innovative and energetic spirit in close contact with International artistic activity to explore cross fertilisation of ideas, concerns and challenges.

The platform will invite artists of consequence from diverse cultural backgrounds, creative disciplines and outlooks for a novel and multi-disciplinary aesthetic encounter and exploration of its thematic focus.