Bluecoat: Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Bluecoat

In Gallery 2, a survey of Raisa Kabir’s work, titled ‘Utterances: Our vessels for the stories, unspoken. Subaqueous violence. Sea. Ocean…’ (2016-present) encompasses woven text, textiles, sound, video, and performance to convey and visualise concepts concerning the cultural politics of cloth, its associated labour and networks of extraction. The works explore the material histories of cotton, silk, indigo, cochineal, jute and flax. Kabir investigates the production and global trade of these materials, referencing the maritime boats, ships and sails that arrived cargo-laden to Liverpool’s docks. The exhibition is inspired by Kabir’s research into the journey made by Bengal Lascars – Indian sailors employed and exploited by the British East India shipping company – many of whom docked and settled in Liverpool.

In Gallery 3, Kent Chan’s ‘Hot House’ (2020 – ongoing) is an installation and project space which questions the relationship between climates and cultures, and the influence of heat and humidity on our bodies and minds. For Liverpool Biennial 2023, Chan engages with artworks and artefacts of tropical provenance from the Global Cultures collections of World Museum, National Museums Liverpool to produce a new series of videos and installation. Forming part of Chan’s ongoing enquiry into heat and humidity, climate, history, art and the tropics as a meteorological region, the work opens a discussion around why these objects have historically arrived in institutions far from their home countries, where climatic conditions are vastly different, and how they are subsequently perceived. ‘Hot House’ posits the cool and dry, climate-controlled museum conditions as a manifestation of the assumed superiority of one climate and culture over another.

Upstairs, Benoît Piéron’s work deals with the uncertainty of life, death and immunity. His practice reappropriates and transfigures the medical environments and materials that surround him – hospital sheets and gowns, IV drips and waiting room furniture – to create something new, joyful, and full of life. Piéron’s stuffed animals, entitled ‘Peluche Psychopompe’ (2022), are made using discarded hospital bed sheets. Despite this visceral display of illness, the work is a testament to play through creative practices and seeks to produce alternative expressions of disease as a site of potential. At Bluecoat, Piéron creates a space amongst a selection of his existing artworks which invites visitors to explore, rest and play.