BIENALSUR 5th edition
Antonio Della Guardia
Permanent Illusion
Opening Oktogon NMMU, Room no.1 , 29 November 2025, at noon
Curator:  Benedetta Casini

For information on viewing the site-specific sculptural project Permanent Illusion by Antonio Della Guardia, interested visitors may contact the information channels of the Italian Cultural Institute in Zagreb.

Antonio Della Guardia’s installation For Practices of a New Reality, displayed on the façade of the National Museum of Modern Art at Hebrangova 1, will remain on view until 8 January 2026.

We subsequently invite you to explore the intervention For Practices of a New Reality on the façade of the NMMU – National Museum of Modern Art, Andrija Hebrang Street 1, Zagreb

For the fifth edition of BIENALSUR, Antonio Della Guardia presents two interventions for the city of Zagreb. In the first-floor hall of the Oktogon, the new exhibition space of the NMMU, he presented the site-specific sculptural project Permanent Illusion: fragments of pyrite, a mineral with distinctive reflective properties, are placed alongside Polaroid photographs depicting authoritarian gestures of state leaders from different nations. The close-up images of the portrayed hands reflect on the metallic surface of the lithic bodies, transforming into double, new and imaginative forms. The deconstructed gestures of the powerful men and women rhythmically punctuate the round table occupying the center of the room, an element directly associable with professional contexts or economic transactions. Commonly called “fool’s gold” due to its bright, golden color, pyrite was historically mistaken for gold by inexperienced prospectors who, in their futile attempts to sell it, were later disappointed by its low value. The misunderstanding became proverbial, such that pyrite still symbolizes false riches and dashed hopes. Placed on the conference table, the mineral thus becomes a metaphor for managerial success understood as mere bait, an tempting yet illusory promise of future happiness.
A few meters from the Oktogon, in the public space, the artist presents a series of written performative exercises through phrases and drawings that cover the scaffolding of the NMMU, currently under restoration. In For Practices of a New Reality, Della Guardia proposes to passers-by a set of bodily and vocal exercises to be performed in different locations across the city of Zagreb, reactivating its symbolic and poetic potential. The exercises, formulated on the basis of the specific characteristics of local parks, houses, bridges, and urban elements, transform the city into a total gymnasium for the imagination, a place of care where one can train and recover inner attention, interrupting the automatic flow of functional movements tied to the mere act of passing through the city. Urban space is thus re-signified by the actions of those who inhabit it daily, encouraged to interact with the elements that animate the city, reawakening its dormant energies. The façade of the NMMU, once a silent surface awaiting its unveiling in a new guise to the city’s inhabitants, becomes a speaking device that dialogues with the city and engages its inhabitants in a series of collective, playful, and liberating actions.

Artist’s biography
Through installations, photography, performances and participative projects Antonio Della Guardia (1990, Italy) investigates and deconstructs the internalized forms of relating to urban space and to the time of production. His research has long focused on the forms of conditioning that our contemporary society, marked by self-demand and constant productivity, imposes on the body and cognitive processes, aiming both to trace their effects and to develop imaginative forms and processes of resistance.
His work has been presented in various institutions, including: MEC (Córdoba – Argentina); MUNTREF (Buenos Aires); CAA Art Museum (Hangzhou); MAXXI (Rome), MACRO (Rome), Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (Rome), Triennale (Milan); Centrul De Interes (Cluj-Napoca); La Caja (Caracas); Revoltella Museum (Trieste); Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation (Turin); Izolyatsia Foundation (Kyiv); Morra Greco Foundation (Naples); Antonio Ratti Foundation (Como); Italian Cultural Institute (Krakow, Oslo, Caracas, Warsaw). In 2025, he was among the artists invited to the 18th Quadriennale d’Arte in Rome and a recipient of the Italian Council, a prestigious price for new productions from the Italian Ministry of Culture.

Curator’s biography
Benedetta Casini (Bologna, 1991) is an independent curator and researcher. Since 2017 she has been part of the curatorial board of BIENALSUR. She recently curated the diffused exhibition project Invocations, spread in different exhibition venues between Rome and Milan (Italy). In 2022, she received the Lucio Fontana Research Grant. She collaborated with institutions such as the MADRE (Naples), the MACBA (Barcelona), the MAXXI (Rome), and the Royal Spanish Academy in Rome. She worked with artists such as Jordi Colomer, Bruna Esposito, Antoni Muntadas, Jonathas de Andrade. Among her publications, Out of place. The Territory of Art as a Space of Exception.

BIENALSUR

BIENALSUR is an transnational biennial of contemporary art that stands out for its innovative nature and global approach. Developed by UNTREF – Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, a public university in Argentina, and organized in collaboration with the Foro del Sur Foundation, BIENALSUR has established itself as an innovative model of cultural management and international cooperation. Since its first edition in 2017, BIENALSUR has been a meeting point for different cultures, capable of developing an international institutional network that connects various geographic areas. The project is characterized by a “distributed” model that does not limit itself to a single exhibition site but instead expands across multiple cities worldwide, making its activities accessible to a broad and diverse audience that does not need to travel to visit the biennial, which instead reaches them through its programming. BIENALSUR unfolds across multiple latitudes: among the cities involved are Buenos Aires, Milan, Santiago, Montevideo, Lima, Madrid, Rome, Paris, Naples, Miami, and many others.

The fifth edition of BIENALSUR began on June 26 in Bogotá (Colombia), while in July 5, exhibition projects were inaugurated at MUNTREF in Buenos Aires. Subsequently BIENALSUR expanded to Europe with a project inaugurated on July 9 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (KM 10048). Between October and November BIENALSUR got to Italy where it inaugurated 5 exhibition projects. In this fifth edition, BIENALSUR once again places environmental issues at the center of the scene, addressing them specifically through analyses related to migration, human rights, future perspectives, and alternative living models. Within the broader reflection on the global crisis of socio-cultural configurations, projects are emerging that examine memory, archives, and heritage—offering new interpretations of history and alternative, anti-canonical narratives.

Reproductions: Antonio della Guardia, drawings from the project For Practices of a New Reality, Zagreb, 2025. Courtesy: the artist”
Cover Image: Antonio della Guardia, image from Permanent Illusion, 2025. Courtesy: the artist