Ten Thousand Suns departs from an acknowledgement of a multiplicity of perspectives, cosmologies, and ways of life that have always woven together the world under the sun. This central life-giving body, like the world it shines light upon, has otherwise been known under thousands of different words in as many languages. But many of these cultural viewpoints have in fact not relied on a vision of a single sun. 

A multiplicity of suns conveys ambiguous images. It evokes a scorching world, both in several cosmological visions and very much in our moment of climate emergency. But it also conveys the joy of cultural multiplicities affirmed, of First Nations understandings of the cosmos brought to the fore, and of carnivals as forms of resistance in contexts that have surpassed colonial oppression. The 24th Biennale of Sydney works with these different layers of meaning, acknowledging the deep ecological crises derived from colonial and capitalist exploitation while refusing to concede to an apocalyptic vision of the future. This politics of doom are seen as an attempt by the same forces that have caused these multiple crises to control possibilities to overcome them. The 24th Biennale of Sydney proposes instead solar and radiant forms of resistance that affirm collective possibilities around a future that is not only possible, but necessary to be lived in joy and plenitude, produced in common and shared widely.  

Around this central theme and ethos, the 24th Biennale of Sydney goes deeper into different connected threads. One of them is the history and the imagination around the atomic era, as a concentrated version of the history of climate alteration through human exploitation, but also as a specific history that places Australia at the core of the atomic era which has largely been staged in the broader Pacific region. Another thread follows a lineage of largely repressed or misconstrued moments that have been crucial in the history of Australia and have involved relations with the Muslim world. These include the complex exchanges between First Nations and Muslim Makassars over many centuries; the history of cameleers from across South and West Asia, trafficked to the country in the 19th century and later exiled due to the introduction of the White Australia policy; the formation of an Australian national identity as a consequence to the loss at Gallipoli in the First World War, orchestrated from London as an anti-jihad preventive campaign; Australia’s history of racist anti-migration policies, as well as the broader role that Islamophobia plays in processes of othering in contemporary life in the country. 

White Bay Power Station

The NSW State Heritage-listed White Bay Power Station will soon bring new energy to Sydney and Australia as it opens its doors to the public for the 2024 Biennale of Sydney on 9 March 2024.

Placemaking NSW has undertaken extensive remediation and conservation works to repurpose the site as an arts, cultural and community hub.

White Bay Power Station will become a focal point for the transformation of the Bays West precinct into a connected and vibrant new area for living, working and recreation.

Cosmin Costinaş is currently Senior Curator of Exhibition Practices at HKW-The House of World Cultures, Berlin. He was co-Curator of the Romanian Pavilion for the 59th Venice Biennale (2022). He was the Executive Director and Curator of Para Site, Hong Kong’s leading contemporary art centre and one of the oldest and most active independent art institutions in Asia. During his 11 year tenure (2011-2022) he oversaw the institution’s major expansion and relocation, having curated numerous exhibitions including Garden of Six Seasons and A beast, a god, and a line. He was recently Artistic Director of Kathmandu Triennale 2022, the fourth edition of Nepal’s premier international platform for global contemporary arts. Costinaș is a Curatorial Adviser at the Aichi Triennale (2022). He was Guest Curator at the Dhaka Art  Summit ’18 (2018), Co-curator of the 10th Shanghai Biennale (2014), curator of BAK, Utrecht (2008-2011), Co-curator of the 1st Ural Industrial Biennial, Ekaterinburg (2010) and Editor of documenta 12 Magazines, documenta 12, Kassel (2005–2007).

Inti Guerrero is currently tutor of the Curatorial Studies programme at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts-KASK, Ghent. He was the Artistic Director of bap—bellas artes projects, Manila (2018-2022), Curator of the 38th EVA International, Ireland’s Biennial, Limerick (2018), Artistic Director of TEOR/éTica, San Jose (2011-2014) and the Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator at Tate, London (2016-2020). In 2016, Guerrero was the inaugural curator in residence of the International Visiting Curators Program by Artspace and  UNSW Art & Design, Sydney. As an independent curator, Guerrero has curated exhibitions across Asia,  Europe and Latin America, including Institute for Tropical and Galactical Studies in the Yokohama Triennale 2020, A Chronicle of Interventions, Tate Modern, London (2014) and A Transatlantic Affair: Josephine Baker and Le Corbusier, Museum of Art of Rio-MAR in Rio de Janeiro (2014). He has edited and contributed his writing to numerous books, magazines, and exhibition catalogues and has taught and lectured at different universities, art academies, and institutions across the world.