One of the most eagerly anticipated art events of 2023 is the long-awaited Tennessee Triennial. The triennial is a statewide art event organized by Tri-Star Arts that was originally slated for 2020. The delay — and all that’s happened in the time between — only makes it more exciting. From Jan. 27 through May 7, Tennessee’s four largest cities — Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville and Chattanooga — will host contemporary art events organized around the theme “Re-Pair.”
Tri-Star tapped artist and Cornelius Vanderbilt Endowed Chair of Fine Arts María Magdalena Campos-Pons as the triennial’s consulting curator. It’s a smart move. Campos-Pons is well-equipped to spearhead such a visionary concept, and has been part of biennials and triennials across the globe — including in Venice, China, Liverpool and Dakar, not to mention the 2019 Havana Biennial, in which she brought the work of several Nashville-based artists to her hometown of Matanzas, Cuba, for the first time.
“Re-Pair” is a concept that Campos-Pons considers both timely and aspirational. “What I tried to do with this word by inserting this hyphen in between,” she says, “is to think about the effort of rethinking, restructuring and mending, but also bringing things together. So it’s not only about mending or returning to a place that might require more thinking, but it’s also about coming together. Now these four cities that are part of this great state of Tennessee are pairing together to celebrate visual art in all these different points. It’s fundamentally about working together — looking back and looking together. Joining energies and joining forces. It’s a metaphor for collective effort, but one that doesn’t take away from the individuality of each city.”
The city will be engaged with a number of performances so Nashvillians can be reacquainted with spaces we already know — venues like the Parthenon, the Frist Art Museum, Fisk University, Cheekwood, the National Museum of African American Music, Vanderbilt and various commercial galleries.
“My vision, my dream, is that one day we will have an opening for a Tennessee Triennial that is as large as a music festival,” says Campos-Pons. “We have an audience that is very sensitive and open to the arts. In Nashville’s case, sonic arts, music, is what the city is known for. But we can open a window for this audience, which is already there for music, to consider that visuality has a space there too. That painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, photography, performance art are part of what constitutes the fabric and the skin of the city.”
