DIPLOMACY FOR WORLDS TO COME

Each edition of the Jeune Création Européenne Biennale raises a fresh challenge: to circulate the selected artists and their works throughout the continent. But under the guise of a straightforward travelling exhibition, don’t be mistaken, its true aim is to circulate ideas.
Indeed, the nine cities located in nine different countries commit to an ideal: asserting that the worldviews borne by contemporary artists are building the world of tomorrow. Their complementary or contradicting visions induce us to doubt or to consider things from increasingly improbable angles; each vision is a wedge driven into the determinism of an established world, since one of the missions of contemporary art is to pry us from our certainties.

Nine anchorage points for this edition: Montrouge in France, Amarante in Portugal, Figueres (Catalonia) in Spain, Como in Italy, Maastricht in the Netherlands, Klaipeda in Lithuania, Brussels in Belgium, Budapest in Hungary, Hamburg in Germany.
Artists from each of these countries express the questions of our time, about the meaning of life and our relationship to the world. But who is to say that a Portuguese artist’s question today won’t be answered tomorrow in Lithuania ?

No one can deny their influence on the evolution of ideas and of society. The JCE demonstrates the vitality of our artists and contributes to this exchange of ideas through its unique program to support young artists with a travelling exhibition and residencies. In this respect, the Jeune Création Européenne Biennale is a form of diplomacy between cities, with artists as ambassadors.

Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen artists, on the behalf of the Jeune Création Européenne Biennale, we thank-you.

Jean-Loup Metton
Mayor of Montrouge
Vice-president of the Conseil Général des Hauts de Seine

Alexandra Favre
First Deputy
Commissioner for Culture