Commisioned work for
Art Encounters Biennale

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.

Unfolding as many narrative threads, the biennial draws inspiration from a remarkable example of artistic and scientific imagination: Albrecht Dürer’s renowned work Rhinocerus, created in 1515 without the artist ever seeing the depicted animal. It was a response to a strange encounter, the first rhino traveling to the European continent since antiquity. But Ganda, as its Gujarati name was, reached Pope Leo X only as a taxidermic relic. Dürer’s imaginative woodcut became one of the most influential animal images, finding its way into scientific publications up until the 18th century and continuing to be incorporated into numerous artistic imageries long after.

With the Rhinocerus, the power of the imaginative reflects on both the artistic and scientific realm; on forms of collaborations that haven’t yet been systemized and divided in what modernity will frame as The Two Cultures: sciences and humanities. But Ganda was also a breathing being, one of the living artefacts serving as accessories of power. Its voyage around the world also mapped a geopolitical trajectory in all its haunting history of violence. Therefore, it tells a complex story of entangled places, manners of knowledge-making and a society in a profound process of change.

Art Encounters Biennale Concept