Industrial Art Biennale

The death of traditional industries and the growth of tourism is remorselessly changing the face of northwestern Croatia, transforming an area that once made and exported things into a service area for incoming leisure consumers. Attempting to analyze these changes and point towards potential futures is the Industrial Art Biennale, a wide-ranging and ambitious event established in the former mining town of Labin in 2014. Labin remains one of the Biennale’s key venues, with the pithead buildings of the disused mine serving as main exhibition space, although the Biennale has now spread its wings to embrace the cities of Rijeka and Pula as well. Providing the Biennale with its unique post-industrial flavour is the landscape in which it takes place: the Labin pithead with its colossal winding tower, the nearby mining village of Raša with its planned modernist housing, and Rijeka itself with its dockyard cranes and red-brick warehouses. Main theme of the Biennale this time round will the changing nature of work under the impact of new technologies, and the prospect of a post-work future. With a long list of local and international participants, it promises to be one of the biggest and most compelling art events of the year.