The Medina Triennial, a brand-new walkable contemporary art exhibition set to take place in the Western New York town from June to September of this year, has released the list of artists who will be featured in the first edition.
The participants include Tania Candiani, a Mexico City-based interdisciplinary artist known for her large-scale installations. Her creation for the Medina Triennial is Two Waters, an Erie Canal–inspired filmed performance she made as part of a collaboration with composer Rogelio Sosa. Two Waters is a four-hour, one-take vocal performance.
Lina Lapelytė, a Venice Biennale Golden Lion–winning artist, will bring Faithfully Recording, a new durational performance in which singers and construction workers build a public sculpture from reclaimed Medina sandstone, to the Triennial. Other participants include Asad Raza, an American artist who frequently includes rivers in his installations; sculptor Mary Mattingly, Conceptual artist Ash Arder, and sculptor Michael Wang.
The Triennial will unfold over several discrete locations in the town, including a railroad museum, churches, parks, hospital corridors and a 100-year-old high school. The intent of these settings is to answer the following questions: What does it take to keep civic life, ecosystems, and shared infrastructure going under strain? How can global contemporary art meaningfully root itself in local communities and landscapes?
“What excites us most about this inaugural edition is that more than a year of conversations with artists and Medina residents will finally take public form. The exhibition has grown out of those exchanges and out of the village itself,” Kari Conte and Karin Laansoo, co-artistic directors of the Triennial, told Artnews. “We hope visitors will feel what the artists have felt: that Medina is not simply the setting for the Triennial, but its central animating force.”
