From 5 June to 27 July 2025, the Biennale für Freiburg 3, entitled HAPPY PLACE, invites visitors to explore the economy of wanderlust, the semiotics of the picturesque and the political dimension of tourist imaginations. Curated by Lorena Juan, this year’s programme at eight venues and in public space reflects on tourism not as a mere place of escapism, but as a complex cultural phenomenon with profound social, historical and geopolitical interdependencies.
Fig. above: Irene Fernández Arcas, Temple of Collective Regeneration, Foto: Sebastian Eggler
The Biennale takes Freiburg’s common marketing as the ‘South of Germany’ as its starting point – a place of longing that is staged in postcard-like images of sunshine, tradition and Mediterranean flair. HAPPY PLACE illuminates this idealised idyll as an ambivalent projection surface: How are such images created? What interests are behind them? And what real social, ecological or colonial dynamics are concealed by them?
In their works, 36 international and local artists and artist groups deal with questions relating to tourist desires, globalised travel industries, colonial continuities and resistant perspectives. The exhibition ranges from landscape constructions and memory architectures to performative urban explorations.
In addition to the main exhibition in the urban space of Freiburg, the Biennale offers a diverse programme: performative city tours, an interdisciplinary symposium, mediation formats as well as accompanying talks, screenings and workshops. The public space thus becomes a resonating space for artistic reflection and socio-political discussion.
HAPPY PLACE stands for thinking against the surface: the title is deliberately contradictory – capitalised, performative, almost garish – and refers to the idea of ‘cruel optimism’: the belief in happiness in the idyll, even in the midst of uncertainty and global crises.
The Biennale für Freiburg 3 opens up new perspectives on tourism as an aesthetic, economic and political phenomenon – and calls for travellers to be thought of not only as consumers, but also as political subjects.
LIST OF ARTISTS
!Mediengruppe Bitnik / Cem A. / Esvin Alarcón Lam / Irene de Andrés / Céline Baumann / Jonas Brinker / Paloma Contreras Lomas / Enar de Dios Rodríguez / Patricia Domínguez / Elisa Duca / Anna Ehrenstein / Elyla / Lena Marie Emrich / Agnes Essonti Luque / Irene Fernández Arcas / Inka & Niclas / Ida Kammerloch / Monika Emmanuelle Kazi / Cosima zu Knyphausen / Left Hand Rotation / Randa Maroufi / Caroline Mesquita / Noha Mokhtar / Isabel Motz / Claudia Pagès Rabal / Marie Popall und Louisa Raspé / Ghita Skali / Christina Sperling / Eve Tagny / Florian Thate / Helena Uambembe / Unofficial Hiking Society / Jasmin Werner / Daniela Zambrano Almidón / Karla Zipfel / etaïnn zwer.
WHEN?
Opening: Thursday, 05 June 2025, 12:30 pm
Exhibition dates: Thursday, 5th June – Sunday, 27th July 2025
WHERE?
LOCATIONS
DELPHI_SPACE / Kaiserwache / Kulturaggregat / Kunstverein Freiburg / Museum für Neue Kunst / Pförtnerhaus / Schopf 2 / Schauinslandbahn / diverse Orte des öffentlichen Raumes
