2ª Mercosur Biennial

The 2 nd Mercosur Biennial took place in 1999 and showed works from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, with Colombia as guest country. The event opened on November 5 with a concert by the Porto Alegre Symphony Orchestra performing the "Mercosur Symphony", composed especially for the event by Nestor Wennholz. This Biennial highlighted the process of Mercosur integration and the need to promote a harmony of differences. This Biennial aimed not to assemble the works around a theme but around the problematics of current issues. 1999 was marked by a strong devaluation of the Real against the US dollar, which had a considerable effect on the Biennial budget. This edition was therefore characterized by the challenge of making the event viable in a financially unfavorable context. Considerably more modest than the previous edition, the great merits of 2 nd Mercosur Biennial were the efforts made to consolidate the project. According to the curators, the guidelines for this exhibition were adoption of the concepts of "identity" and "cultural diversity", without transforming them into a thematic approach, allowing free and generalized association about diversity in contemporary artistic production. The 2 nd Biennial was defined by an emphasis on issues around art and technology, and the historical segments were confined to the Picasso exhibition. This was the first time the Biennial included artists from outside Mercosur who were not from Latin American guest countries, seeking to emphasize the multiple artistic influences we receive from other cultural centers. In addition to the national representations, the 2 nd Biennial also brought the following exhibitions: Art and Technology - CyberArt: Zones of interaction, which assembled six installations on the ground floor of the Usina do Gasômetro building, together with art internet pages, followed by a symposium on the theme, and exhibition by Julio le Parc, and the Picasso, Cubists and Latin America exhibition. This edition also showed a segment of art interventions on the Guaíba riverside that aimed to show art outside the conventional exhibition circuit. The artist of honor for the 2 nd Biennial was the painter Iberê Camargo, whose exhibition occupied the first floor of the Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul. The exhibition showed the artist's work from the 1950s to the early 1990s. The Picasso, Cubists and Latin America exhibition sought to highlight the influences and reciprocities between European and Latin American artists by showing the work of several artists from Mercosur and Colombia influenced by the cubism of Picasso and other important cubist artists. Continuing the achievements of the 1 st Biennial, several spaces were refurbished to hold exhibitions, including the DEPRC quayside warehouses and MARGS, which underwent further refurbishment. An admission fee was charged, except for entry to the Gasômetro exhibition. Admission was free for one day per week. The 2 nd Biennial was visited by a total of 294,201 people. A touring program was arranged, taking part of the Biennial to the Universidade de Caxias do Sul and Buenos Aires, with the aim of consolidating the event at national and regional level, and promoting it to the art-cultural community of the state.