Ecuador's Bienal de Cuenca marks 40th anniversary with a playful theme but a serious tone
- May 24
- 1 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
The Art Newspaper, October 2025
This year the Bienal de Cuenca, the country’s premier international art event, celebrated its 40th anniversary with a thematic twist. Under the title The Game, the 17th edition opened on 24 October in the Andean city of Cuenca, a UNESCO World Heritage site perched more than 2,000 metres above sea level.
Co‑authored by Verónica Pesantes and Charmaine Picard, the Art Newspaper review highlights how the 2025 biennial offered a counterpoint to commercial art fairs by spotlighting artists and curators from the Global South, prioritizing social and political concerns over market‑driven priorities.
Rather than appoint a single artistic director, the Bienal invited 17 internationally acclaimed curators to participate, each selecting three artists—at least one from Ecuador—resulting in 51 projects spread across museums, botanical gardens, the airport and even a 16th‑century convent. Executive director Hernán Pacurucu, appointed in 2023, emphasized public access through programs like “Open Doors” and art kiosks around the country.
![Rodriguez’s “Currents of Resistance,” like her interdisciplinary practice as a whole, reveals the hidden layers of history, where colonial resistance still echoes in the land itself. Her work reminds us of the need to engage with history as an agent of change. “We are living in a very dangerous time,” Rodriguez said. “Art must create space—for critical thinking, conversations, for beauty, for joy, and for action. It is essential to look back at factual histories, paying close attention to those eras where our communities have been targeted to understand how we protect each other [in order to] persist and thrive.”](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/6c8e7f_c5545cbdcf3b49169fd1920e56d8d123~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_980,h_804,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/6c8e7f_c5545cbdcf3b49169fd1920e56d8d123~mv2.jpg)
