Festival

Whitstable Biennale 2022

Afterwardness

2022

A line of people, dressed in bright white costumes resembling coral or strange sea creatures, walk across a sandy beach on a bright, hazy day. The beach is littered with stones covered in seaweed, and behind the procession is a large sheer cliff of stone.

Jennet Thomas, The Great Curdling, 2022. Photo: Paul Tarragó

Aimée Zito Lema, The Sea as Common Ground (live performance with video, sound, script and costumes), 2022. Courtesy of the artist.

Webb-Ellis, This place is a message (film still), 2022. Courtesy of the artists.

Whitstable Biennale returned this year for its 10th edition, taking place from Saturday 11 June to Sunday 19 June 2022. 

This year’s festival borrowed its title from Mimi Khalvati’s evocative poem, Afterwardness. Through the eyes of ‘an eleven year old boy from Aleppo’ the poem explores loss, trauma and the concept of ‘afterwardness’, a term originally coined by Sigmund Freud to describe the belated understanding of events that comes with the passing of time.

Continuing the festival’s strong tradition of programming some of the most exciting and experimental visual art being made in the UK today, Whitstable Biennale 2022 wove film, performance and sound into the fabric of the town, and create direct, and often intimate, opportunities for local people and visitors to engage with contemporary art and artists.

Participating artists included: 

Abigail Mitchell, Aimée Zito Lema, Alicia Radage, Anna Barham, Anna-Maria Nabirye, Arianne Churchman, Ben Judd, Chromatic Agency (nnull & Sandy Rompotiyoke), Dan Guthrie, Dipesh Pandya, Dzifa Benson, Grewal Twins, Jade Montserrat, Jennet Thomas, Junior Roberts & Ollie Barron, Katrin Albrecht, Kiran Kaur Brar, Lou Lou Sainsbury, Lucie Rachel & Chrissie Hyde, Madeleine Ruggi, Marcus Liversedge & Karen Morash, Mimi Khalvati, Neta Miriam Perez, Nicole Bachmann, Olivia Furber with Nour Sokhon & Ramzi Maqdisi, Patrick Flannery Walker, Ruth Waters, Sarah Craske, Savinder Bual, Sonya Dyer, Webb-Ellis, and more.

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Visit whitstablebiennale.com to see the full festival programme and to plan you visit.