Pontevedra returns to its artistic glory with its revived Biennial: "It became a benchmark and positioned a small city on the international scene."

In the ruins of Santo Domingo, amid open-air Gothic apses, a broken rose window, and the moss covering the stones of the 14th-century convent, a white barricade constructed of pillows and sheets is striking. From a distance, it looks like a cloud, but it's an installation by Kurdish artist Zehra Dogan, who spent nearly three years in a Turkish prison for a drawing depicting the destruction of Nusaybin. Erdogan 's regime deemed it "terrorist propaganda." Artists such as Ai Weiwei and Banksy called for Dogan's release, but thanks to international pressure, she was acquitted and this summer she is emerging as one of the stars of the Pontevedra Biennial, where she presents her harrowing prison diary and a piece in which the audience uses a slingshot against a tank, as she did as a child.

Under the motto "Being Human Again. Facing the Pain of Others," Pontevedra revives its Biennial after a long 15-year absence. And it does so with a courageous reflection on a present at war. The devastation of Palestine and the invasion of Ukraine are contextualized within the echoes of other conflicts, once covered in the media or long forgotten: the barbarity in Yugoslavia, the Taliban terror in Afghanistan, the genocide in Rwanda, the civil war in Sudan, the chronic violence in Mali... Also our Civil War. Also Goya with Universal Disasters .

"War is the norm and peace the exception," Susan Sontag reminds us. "What can we do in the face of conflict? The philosopher Rob Riemen advocates recovering the values of the Enlightenment and becoming human again. That is the thesis of the Biennial: to send a humanist message of hope," explains curator and professor Antón Castro, who directed three editions in the 1980s. "The Biennial became a benchmark and positioned a small city like Pontevedra, with a population of 86,000, on the international contemporary art circuit," sighs Castro, who brought together 60 artists of 28 nationalities, 40% of whom have participated in the Venice Biennale, the oldest in Europe.

Although the Pontevedra Festival was the oldest in Spain - founded in 1969 - and hosted many major artists, the last edition was held in 2010. The economic crisis and political apathy put an end to one of the country's emblematic artistic events, which depended on the Pontevedra Provincial Council, then under the presidency of Rafael Louzán (today, he presides over the Football Federation, replacing Luis Rubiales , not without controversy, as he had been convicted of prevarication, although the Supreme Court has acquitted him ).

"The Biennial isn't returning, it's reborn. We're already working on the 2027 edition and hope to ensure its continuity regardless of political ups and downs ," asserts its president, Rafa Domínguez, vice president of the Provincial Council and tenacious driving force behind the event. "There were many voices in the cultural sector calling for this Biennial," he adds. This is even more so in a country where biennials come and go, like the one in Valencia or the BIACS in Seville, promoted by Juana de Aizpuru.

Perhaps the work that best encapsulates the essence of this politically charged and risky Biennial is Aleppo/Guernica/Kiev/Rafah by Mexican artist Fritza Irizar. The title says it all. Installed in a glass-enclosed room at the Pontevedra Museum, it is now nothing more than an immense painting, three by 6.7 meters, all colorful polka dots. Beneath it is Picasso 's Guernica , covered in a trencadís of cut-out papers: images of war victims published in various media. Using a confetti cannon, Irizar shot Guernica until it disappeared. Almost as a replica, if the visitor looks toward the museum's inner courtyard, an oasis emerges: Flor de seis pétalos by Galician artist Almudena Fernández, a mosaic garden that evokes philosopher Byung-Chul Han 's idea that "God has given flowers to man to relieve the most uncontrollable violence."

After this symbolic prelude, Antón Castro unfolds a thesis statement, dense but free from cryptic conceptualisms, that calls for an enlightened humanism. Here, there are no colors or sides: all wars are wars. At first glance, it's even difficult to distinguish the landscape of devastation in Ukraine, photographed in 2022 by Gabriel Tizón, from the siege of Sarajevo in 1992, documented by one of the best national photojournalists, Gervasio Sánchez.

Antoni Muntadas condenses this war confusion into a six-meter mural of blood and death, I'm Afraid! , based on the popular comic book that every Spanish child read in the 1950s, War Exploits . "All wars are a continuum," Castro laments as he wanders through the museum's halls like a captain (as a young man, and like a true Galician, he studied nautical science, but dropped it to study philosophy and literature). The exhibition space has been transformed into a kind of labyrinth reminiscent of the cabins of a ship, and the walls have been painted with diagonal lines and abstract geometries. "They are the Baltic stripes that were used in the fleets of the First World War as a form of camouflage. In the Second, the Allies also extended it to airplanes," Castro points out. A war camouflage that is pure geometric art.

"Art is a weapon of the Revolution," is how Cuban children were taught in class, recalls Dagoberto Rodríguez, one of the founders of Los Carpinteros, an artist collective in Havana, although he has lived in Madrid since leaving the island. Rodríguez presents Home Tow , a kind of architectural model shaped like a rusty machine gun: it's the steel from an American TOW missile, the most widely used in the world.

Beyond the museum as the epicenter of the Biennial, and as is the case in Venice, but with an Atlantic feel and on the Pontevedra scale, the former church of Santa Clara stands out as one of the most evocative exhibition spaces. Its magnificent Baroque altarpiece crowned by Solomonic columns contrasts with contemporary pieces such as the modern carving "Heroic Flowers" by Marina Nuñez, which depicts the epic battles of classical painting fought by flowers fighting each other.

Another sanctuary, that of the Peregrina, kicked off the Biennial coinciding with the summer solstice, becoming the multicolored canvas for a light installation by Patrice Warrener, "the light artist," who has intervened in monuments such as Westminster Abbey and Notre Dame. In just one month, the Biennial has already attracted more than 23,000 visitors, and the program until September 30th will expand to other parts of the province, such as the town of Ponteareas, where Janet Navás performed in the spectacular skeleton of the Tea steel warehouse, before work began on converting it into a municipal market. "In fact, the work was delayed so she could perform," Castro emphasizes.

The final pending project is the Sculpture Island, created in 1999, to which two more pieces will be added. In the late 1990s, the Biennial transformed an impassable river island into the largest open-air museum in Galicia, with a surface area of seven hectares and a roster of top-level artists: Giovanni Anselmo, Robert Morris, Jenny Holzer ... Despite its current state of semi-abandonment, with graffitied works and remains of drinking parties, the revived Biennial also aims to resurrect its island.