DaWire

The work of Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander often explores the minuteness and grandeur of everyday actions. In her mid-career retrospective at the New Museum, A Day Like Any Other, the artist conveys these poetic actions through a variety of different media, including film, sculpture, collage, painting, installation and participatory events. From rain-weathered maps to a looped video that follows a wandering soap bubble, Neuenschwander presents small, seemingly insignificant occurrences that become metaphors for translation and transience.[...]

The whole of last July saw the launch of Denver’s inaugural Biennial of the Americas, an international event dedicated to “celebrat[ing] the culture, ideas and people of the Western Hemisphere”—a considerable endeavor for any one city. The event culminated in citywide exhibitions, samples of cultural diversity, and a series of roundtables that brought together world leaders, dignitaries, and other industry experts to discuss the broader issues of the day. However, this is not a biennial in the conventional sense, as contemporary art played a surprisingly small role. Instead, it could more appropriately be described as a platform for the hemisphere’s 35 nations to air their grievances, with a few object lessons thrown in.[...]