GISELLE AU-NHIEN NGUYEN
What is the significance of the theme Ten Thousand Suns?
INTI GUERRERO
It’s a call for the celebration of the multiplicity of perspectives, and the gathering of different viewpoints. We like to recall the Chinese mythology of Hou Yi, the great archer, who took down nine of the 10 suns that existed in antiquity and that’s how we ended up with one of them. We’re not waiting for a single hero to take down those nine suns, but there are solutions in things like community and learning from different contexts to shift the psyche around our apocalyptic time.
It’s also learning from other moments and communities that have had apocalyptic moments in history, whether it’s during the AIDS epidemic—the queer community did indeed live through an apocalyptic time—and how First Nations across the world lived through different times. Their mere presence is resistance to different layers of historical violence.
GAN
What is the importance of, as your Biennale statement says, “challenging Western fatalistic constructions of the apocalypse”?
COSMIN COSTINAȘ
There is a direct continuity between the enactment of the conditions that led to the current climate crisis through colonialism, different forms of exploitation
