Reclaiming histories, reimagining belonging across a dispersed city.
The Biennale of Sydney marks its 25th edition with ‘Rememory’, a proposition that feels both timely and necessary. Opening this weekend and unfolding across an expanded network of sites, the exhibition gathers more than 80 artists and collectives from across the globe, threading together stories of memory, rupture and return within the lived fabric of the city.
Curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, ‘Rememory’ borrows its title from Toni Morrison, invoking a concept where memory is not fixed but active, a force that resurfaces and reshapes the present. This framing is not merely poetic. It becomes structural, guiding an exhibition that leans into the unstable terrain between personal histories and collective narratives. Across Sydney’s major institutions and civic spaces, artworks do not simply occupy sites but enter into dialogue with them, unsettling dominant histories while foregrounding voices often held at the margins.
What distinguishes this edition is its insistence on proximity. The Biennale extends beyond its traditional anchors into suburban and community spaces, mapping a geography that reflects the complexity of contemporary Sydney. In doing so, it resists the centripetal pull of the global art circuit and instead redistributes attention toward local contexts and audiences. This expanded footprint is not just logistical. It is ideological, aligning with a curatorial ethos that privileges access, encounter and the politics of presence.
Central to ‘Rememory’ is the amplification of First Nations perspectives and diasporic experiences. New commissions by Indigenous artists from around the world foreground practices rooted in land, ancestry, and communal knowledge. These works operate as acts of continuity as much as resistance, insisting on the endurance of cultural memory despite historical erasure. Elsewhere, artists engage with migration, incarceration and inherited trauma, revealing how systems of power continue to shape lived realities across geographies.
Materially, the exhibition moves between scale and intimacy. Monumental installations sit alongside quiet gestures, each carrying its own register of memory. A woven heart becomes a meditation on absence. A multi-channel video work exposes the violence of detention systems. A communal oven transforms food into a site of gathering and exchange. These works resist singular readings, instead inviting viewers into layered, often uncomfortable reflections on belonging.
In its 25th iteration, the Biennale of Sydney offers no resolution. Rather, it proposes a space of ongoing negotiation in which histories are neither settled nor singular. ‘Rememory’ asks what it means to remember together, and more importantly, who gets to be remembered at all.
