Art Encounters Biennial 2023 | FABER

The 5th edition of the Art Encounters Biennial My Rhino is not a Myth focuses on the intersection between art, science and fictions, by exploring their potential to reclaim reality as a mesh of complex processes. In between scientific explorations and imaginative speculation, it touches upon stories of the unknown and the drive to change, adapt or subvert.

About location:

Having its headquarters in a building that in 1844 belonged to the former United Oil and Soap Factories, renamed in 1948 the Lumina Factory and then the Azur Factory, the FABER Cultural Center aims to facilitate the development of the creative and cultural environment by providing contemporary workspaces, prototyping studios, meeting and event spaces, a bistro, and accommodation.

About Exhibition:

In 1515, Albrecht Dürer created his renowned Rhinocerus in response to a strange encounter: the first rhino since antiquity to travel to the European continent. But Dürer had never seen the depicted animal. Ganda, by its Gujarati name, drowned before reaching its destination. Its voyage around the world mapped a geopolitical trajectory and reminds us that less-known stories of exploitation and violence overshadowed the histories of exploration and discovery. Engaging with other works of fiction, such as Eugène Ionesco's Theatre of the Absurd entitled Rhinocéros, the biennial follows the stories inspired by Ganda, reclaiming the imaginative play of science and art in an entangled world marked by environmental and societal transformations. 

Language is how we try to make sense of the world, how we transmit and translate information. Yet language is always a fabrication, and as such is always subject to change or disappearance. As part of a former factory complex, the current FABER building has been a silent witness to many codes embedded in forms of production and creative endeavours. Cyphers and language create rifts in time like archives or sounds do, often bringing remnants of the past back to life, or other desires for the future to emerge. They become manners of calling something into being, played out in images, performative alphabets, or latent technologies.


Artists: Korakrit Arunanondchai, Stoyan Dechev, Arantxa Etcheverria, Alicja Kwade, Christopher Kulendran Thomas, Pushpamala N

Curatorial team: Cristina Bută, Monica Dănilă, Edith Lázár, Ann Mbuti, Adrian Notz, Cristina Stoenescu, Georgia Țidorescu

INFO POINT – Art Encounters Foundation, Bd. Take Ionescu 46C

The program of all exhibition spaces:
Wednesday – Sunday, 12:00 – 20:00

National Museum of Art Timisoara:
Wednesday – Sunday, 13:00 – 21:00

*Free entry, unless otherwise stated

**This program may undergo changes in the following period, please check the updates on our website at: 2023.artencounters.ro

*** For appointments: [email protected] / 0792 310 052

The Art Encounters Biennial is an event organised by The Art Encounters Foundation and is financed by the Municipality of Timișoara through the Center for Projects and co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and the Administration of the National Cultural Fund, with Raiffeisen Bank as main partner and ISHO, TAZZ, MEWI and DacoArt as sponsors.

Part of

Bienala Art Encounters 2023, My Rhino is not a Myth. Art-Science-Fictions

Bienala Art Encounters 2023, My Rhino is not …