by Adela Lovric // Nov. 28, 2025
Slipping into the attention abyss between two blockbuster art fairs in London and Paris, Artes Mundi 11 opened quietly last month across Wales. In many ways, it felt like an antidote to the pomp and pageantry of the former. Anchored in an “ongoing examination of the human condition,” the biennial set out to “engage with the urgent issues of our time,” to “deepen our understanding of ourselves, others and the relations between familiar and distant cultures” and to “celebrate diversity,” as per the press release.
These lofty catchphrases begin to earn their keep once you grasp this spread-out biennial’s offering: six solo exhibitions by the Artes Mundi Prize nominees—Jumana Emil Abboud, Anawana Haloba, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Sancintya Mohini Simpson, Antonio Paucar and Sawangwongse Yawnghwe—and a group show that brings their contributions together. For the second time, and once again under the artistic direction of Nigel Prince, Artes Mundi stretches across art spaces nationwide, many of them largely unfamiliar to an international audience: Mostyn in Llandudno, Aberystwyth Arts Centre in Aberystwyth, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea, and National Museum Cardiff and Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff.
With five venues across four cities, the biennial’s decentralized sprawl initially seems excessive and unwieldy. But eventually, the decision to scatter rather than concentrate it in one place (Cardiff served as the safe choice until Artes Mundi’s 10th edition) proves to carry its weight. By extending itself into smaller communities, places where international art rarely lands, the biennial’s format works in favor of its stated interests. If there was to be any meaningful consideration of the local as it relates to the global, it had to move beyond the capital.
Jumana Emil Abboud, Installation view at Mostyn, Artes Mundi 11, 2025-26 // Courtesy of Artes Mundi, photo by Rob Battersby
Some of the participating artists directly engage with the context of Wales, demonstrating that the pastoral landscapes visitors have to traverse to reach the exhibitions, as well as the local artistic practices that have sprung from this environment, are just as integral to the biennial’s broader narrative of cross-cultural exchange, and to the experience of it, as the selected artworks and the venues that house them.
Jumana Emil Abboud bases her work in folklore and myth to trace how stories cling to place, even through occupation, erasure and shifting landscapes. Her long-running, collaborative project ‘Water Divining’ anchors this practice, listening for what wells and springs remember. For her show at Mostyn, Abboud led workshops and walks through the North Wales terrain with local artists and writers, awakening the region’s own lore through a new body of embroideries and a spoken word performance, and tracing how distant places like Palestine and Wales echo one another through deep connection to water.
Antonio Paucar, Installation view at Mostyn, Artes Mundi 11, 2025-26 // Courtesy of Artes Mundi, photo by Rob Battersby
For his adjoining exhibition at Mostyn, Antonio Paucar took a parallel route, drawing on Andean ritual, Indigenous cosmologies and his ongoing practice of poetic embodiment. He reactivated an earlier work by setting off on a barefoot walk through the Welsh hills. Beside the video documenting this journey, the gallery wall bears the imprint of his clay-covered feet—a ritualistic trace left by a handstand performed in situ—closing a loop between seemingly disparate worlds. Here, as throughout the entire biennial, the theme of remembering and rehearsing the interconnectedness of all things looms large.
Paucar also presents a series of video performance works that reference, through the approach of embodied knowledge, the Western art historical canon (namely Marcel Duchamp and Leonardo da Vinci), which aligns with Anawana Haloba’s and Sawangwongse Yawnghwe’s reckoning with the Western claim of authority over artistic forms and the production of meaning. At Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Haloba presents a new iteration of her large-scale installation: a hybrid opera of spoken word and song emanating from objects—horns, calabashes, a woven basket—arranged like actors on a wooden stage. An hour-long sonic performance featuring a dialogue around nationalism, migration and empathy consolidates Western opera with Southern African oral and sound traditions, highlighting voice as the primary instrument of storytelling and sound a channel for resistance and solidarity, speaking to the audience whether or not the words are understood.
Anawana Haloba, Installation view at Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Artes Mundi 11, 2025-26 // Courtesy of Artes Mundi, photo by Rolant Dafis
Next to Haloba’s installation is a display of Yawnghwe’s large-scale paintings that reinterpret photographs from his family archive, juxtaposed with vibrant abstract patterns. While engaging with Western histories of painting and challenging hierarchies of representation in art, Yawnghwe parses through his family’s turbulent past (the artist was born into the Yawnghwe royal family in today’s Myammar, which ruled the Union of Burma after independence from Britain, until the military coup and subsequent exile), in an attempt to clarify a complex political landscape through artistic gestures. Similarly, at Chapter Arts Centre, Sancintya Mohini Simpson’s work draws from her familial background (the artist is a descendant of Indian indentured laborers sent to South Africa’s colonial sugar plantations), turning her attention to what the colonial archive fails to hold while navigating the complexities of migration, memory and trauma.
Sawangwongse Yawnghwe, Installation view at Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Artes Mundi 11, 2025-26 // Courtesy of Artes Mundi, Photo by Rolant Dafis
At Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Kameelah Janan Rasheed offers a rehreshing break from inflections of the past, perfecting wordplay in an installation of black-and-white prints on the wall and large banners that stretch from the ground floor to the mezzanine above. Unusual alliterative word pairings—like “Bedazzled Body Bags,” “Xenophobic Xanax” and “Uppity Uterus”—are tasked with jolting the viewer out of autopilot. The wall prints likewise break patterns and expectations, nudging the audience to pause and think about the idea of policing affect or behavior, of whose comfort is prioritized and what purpose etiquette serves. They made me think of the Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos’ famous quote: “We are sorry for the inconvenience, but this is a revolution.”
Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Installation view at Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Artes Mundi 11, 2025-26 // Courtesy of Artes Mundi, photo by Polly Thomas
As the coach bus drove our group between the venues, a fleet of artists, curators and other co-conspirators who joined for parts or the entirety of the journey offered their insights and backstories. By the time we reached the final stop—the group show at the National Museum Cardiff—I had already internalized their vocabularies, mapped the overlaps, grew fond of the personalities. The show was both a polylogue in itself and a culmination of the convivial encounters along the way. Ideally, this is how Artes Mundi 11 would be experienced: as a slow accumulation and a conversation in motion. In reality, most visitors will only see the Cardiff show, which functions as a necessary consolidation, but doesn’t make traveling the longer route any less relevant.
Additional Info
Artes Mundi 11
Biennial: Oct. 24, 2025-Mar. 1, 2026
artesmundi.org
Various Venues
