Faithful to the spirit of waywardness, the 9th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art shape-shifts, diffracts, and expands its time limits.
It is opening on October 31, 2025, with the exhibition “Plot Twist (the science fiction change),” in collaboration with the Thessaloniki Film Festival, and a day of events as hints of an un-hierarchical unfolding leading up to its May–June–July 2026 main manifestation.
Taking errant paths within institutional confines and seeking its alternative ways from Autumn 2025 to Summer 2026, the 9th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art is reconfigurated in many ways (team, partnerships, expression), engaging with the obstacles presented by the structures of the art world in its broader entanglements, refusing to be intimidated or suppressed by them, tending to the processes of aesthetic sociality and the practice of differentiation without separation.
If waywardness can be understood as “a short entry to the possible,” an experimentation with the social otherwise, Biennale 9 is placing itself in the cramped paradox that this presents, which concerns us all. It welcomes the challenge of engaging with this life-affirming concept in respectful acknowledgment of its specific sociopolitical and historical roots within the Black radical tradition and scholarship.
Biennale 9 thus becomes the first testing ground of the ways of radical intelligence, solidarity, defiance, escape and adaptability that it wishes to examine and propose.
The Biennale changes.
Dates and places to remember:
Biennale 9 opening on October 31, 2025
At: MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts, with the exhibition “Plot Twist (the science fiction change),” in collaboration of Biennale 9 with the Thessaloniki Film Festival (show will run until November 16, 2025) AND at Pavilions 2 & 3 (TIF-Helexpo) with a day of events and a party.
Biennale in full manifestation from mid-May to –mid July 2026 (exact dates to be announced soon)
At: Pavilions 2 & 3 (TIF-Helexpo) and Kalochori Delta
- Interim, unfolding Biennale events and spaces to be announced. Stay tuned!
The Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art is co-financed by the European Union (NSRF – “Central Macedonia” Operational Programme).
Curator: Nadja Argyropoulou
Director: Yannis Bolis
Project Management: Eftyhia Petridou, Silia Fasianou
Visual Identity: studio precarity
Architectural Design: Y2K Architects
Curator’s Assistant: Evelyn Zempou
Organizer: MOMus – Metropolitan Organisation of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki
Implementation: MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art-Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art and State Museum of Contemporary Art Collections
Co-organizer: TIF-Helexpo
Partners: Municipality of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki Film Festival
