Biennials Connect Grants

Curated by Dr Mark Sealy, the exhibition Alliance, Infinity, Love – in the Face of the Other, at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, is the central exhibition of the 9th Triennial of Photography Hamburg (5 June to 22 September 2026). The Biennials Connect grant supports the inclusion of artworks by Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Jasmina Cibic, the artist duo Lee Shulman and Omar Victor Diop, and Naeem Mohaiemen within this exhibition of 34 artists from a transglobal community. 

Bakashimika International Photography Festival (18 to 24 June 2026), taking place in Lusaka, Zambia, is developing a platform for Southern African lens-based artists. The British Council grant will support collaborations between artists from the UK and the Southern African region. The artists will be selected via an open call and will create work which will be exhibited during the festival. 

Gasworks and Thailand Biennale are collaborating to co-commission a sculptural installation by Vietnamese artist Thuy Tien Nguyen. Tien is presenting this artwork at the Thailand Biennial until the end of March 2026. The work will then be reconfigured for an exhibition at Gasworks, London, in July. This is the first collaborative project between Gasworks and Thailand Biennale.  

Assemble Studio will participate in the upcoming edition of Beta – Timișoara Architecture Biennial (May to October 2026), titled In Practice – Progress and the Acts of Invention in Architecture. Assemble Studio will contribute to the biennial's programme through a workshop that leads to a site-specific installation and a public presentation. 

This project supports the participation of UK-based artists Mahtab Hussain, Guy Gunaratne and Mandy El-Sayegh in the Bangkok Art Biennale 2026. With the theme Angels & Mara, the artists’ photography, video and painting will feature in an international group exhibition across the city. 

Bristol Photo Festival, in collaboration with Cairo Photo Week, will produce the first solo exhibition in the UK by Cairo-based artist Kegham Djeghalian Jr. He will be presenting the archive of his grandfather, who set up the first photography studio, Photo Kegham, in Gaza (Palestine) after escaping Armenia in 1944.   

The 25th International Image Festival (11 to 18 September 2026) will launch an open call for two artists to participate in the festival. The successful artists will work at the intersections of art, science, design and technology, together with post-digital practices, technodiversities, and cross-cultural exchange. They will be selected by the International Image Festival and their partners RETA.HEX, Cryptic and the School of Digital Arts (SODA), Manchester Metropolitan University. 

Organised by the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, the Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions (6 to 23 February 2026) presented a special screening programme of works by artist and filmmaker Morgan Quaintance. The programme included an artist’s talk. 

RESOLVE Collective will lead a public art project titled ‘Naturalezas Delirantes’ as part of the Bienal Afrodiaspórica. The Bienal Afrodiaspórica is a new platform to showcase the contemporary aesthetic languages of the African diaspora, organised by members BlackGround (Colombia), Museu de Arte do Rio (Brazil), Osikán (Cuba) and Conciencia Afro (Spain/Colombia). RESOLVE will lead a creative laboratory with artists and farmers to excavate Black ecological knowledges. They plan to help facilitate the co-creation of site-specific installations that nourish ecosystems scarred by the sugar industry.  

Cairotronica will host two UK-based new media artists working at the intersection of science, art and technology for a month-long residency in Cairo. These artists will be selected via an open call and, over 20 days, they’ll develop and produce their projects, guided by three multidisciplinary mentors. Their works will then be showcased during the fourth edition of Cairotronica in 2027.  

Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF) will collaborate with Brazilian artists and partners across São Paulo and Rio – including Pinacoteca, Casa do Povo, Bienal de São Paulo– on a new commission which will premiere at EAF 2026. The co-created artwork will return to Brazil –  amplifying climate justice, social engagement and reciprocal cultural exchange. 

We are pleased to support Artes Mundi 11 with the At the Table talks series. The At the Table series brings together the voices of the six AM11 artists alongside those of international curators, artists, historians, thinkers and writers in a series of roundtable discussions. The talks centre on themes and ideas present in each artist’s work and the interwoven relationship between histories and practices, locally to internationally. Imagining we are sitting around a table sharing conversation and exchanging ideas, these talks are a chance to hear different concerns and perspectives while getting to know the artist and their work. 

We are pleased to support the participation of Joe Namy, Nora Adwan, Keith Piper, Marianne Keating and Derek Ogbourne in the Biennale of Sydney (from 14 March until 14 June 2026). Situated on the land and waters of the Gadigal people, the Biennale of Sydney is grounded in and enriched by over 60,000 years of continuous living culture. The 25th Biennale is titled, Rememory. Curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, it is means of revisiting, reconstructing and reclaiming histories that have been erased or repressed. Rememory signifies the intersection of memory and history, where recollection becomes an act of reassembling fragments of the past, whether personal, familial or collective.  

Aichi Triennale, Japan welcomes the participation of influential Ghanaian-born British artist and filmmaker Sir John Akomfrah and UK based conceptual photographer Hrair Sarkissian in their International Contemporary Art Exhibition curated under the title of ‘A Time Between Ashes and Roses’. Aichi Triennale is one of the largest international art festivals in Japan, featuring a diverse range of Japanese and International artists. Both artists’ participation is being supported by us at the British Council through Biennials Connect.

Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, UK hosts Japanese filmmaker Eri Makihara as ‘Artist in Focus’ at the 20th edition of the festival taking place 27-30 March 2025. Through her artistic practice Makihara centres the experience of Deaf people within the dominant hearing culture. This will be the first major showcase of Makihara's work outside of Asia. BFMAF is an artistically ambitious organisation for new cinema and artists’ moving image based in North Northumberland. 

An artist (to be announced) will present a work at the 36th edition of Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil titled 'Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice' – a line from the poem 'Da calma e do silêncio' (Of calm and silence) by Afrobrazilian poet Conceição Evaristo.

Bogiaisso Video Art Festival, Italy brings international video art into dialogue with fisher communities and island residents of Chioggia, in the southern edge of the Venetian Lagoon. Significant works from international artists are shared and discussed with the local working community. In Spring 2025, UK multi-disciplinary artist Abbas Zahedi will participate in an artistic residency researching and responding to the local context, and later attend the Bogiaisso Video Art Festival, 25-28 August 2025.

In response to their curatorial theme of Invention & Innovation, British Textile Biennial, UK, invite Bangalore-based artist Dhara Mehrotra to participate in an artist residency at the Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery in Lancashire, to develop an installation expanding on her research into mycelium networks and their regenerative environmental properties. British Textile Biennial runs from 2 October until 2 November 2025.

Coventry Biennial, UK – a social, political and critical platform for contemporary art taking place across Coventry and Warwickshire from October 2025 to January 2026 – will build on their connection with Kolkata-based organisation Emami Arts to offer emerging Indian contemporary artists a significant opportunity to make, and/or present artworks exploring the roles and impacts of collections and archives in an international context.

EAF (Edinburgh Art Festival), UK, deepen their close collaboration with Colombian Cultural Foundation Más Arte Más Acción (MAMA) and landmark project Around a Tree, which gathers global stories and experiences of the climate emergency (with contributions from Ireland, Scotland, Kenya, Germany and Colombia). Brazilian artists and collectives will be invited to bring their voice to this project as part of its continued production and have presence at EAF25 and COP25 in Brazil.   

Led by artist-run initiative 98B COLLABoratory, ESC Biennale, Philippines, has transformed urban spaces in Escolta, Manila through site-specific works that engage the public. Their 2025 edition will play around the theme tambay reflecting the Filipino spirit of gathering and hanging out. UK artists will be selected via open call to participate in residency alongside local artists, culminating in a project for the Biennale in November 2025.

A new site-specific installation by Derry-born mixed-media artist, Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh, will be commissioned for the 41st EVA International Biennial, Ireland (29 August – 26 October 2025) at Sadlier’s fishmongers in Limerick City. Ó Dochartaigh will also engage in a series of public and networking events with Irish and international peers. The commission forms part of an international curator-led ‘Guest Programme’ on themes of independence and autonomy, curated by Netherlands based Eszter Szakács. 

Groove Biennale, South Africa is an inclusive architecture and music festival celebrating the alternative nightlife scenes in Johannesburg, employing experimental interdisciplinary design to engage the city's traditional architectural profession with youth culture and nightlife. A day will be dedicated to learning and exchange, including a workshop facilitated by three UK-based visual artists for students, queer communities and others interested in the cities’ arts, music and cultural sector. The three-day festival takes place in Johannesburg from 30 January until 1 February 2025 and is presented by DORMANTYOUTH in partnership with Jägermeister x Night Embassy.

Hausa International Book and Arts Festival (HIBAF), Nigeria is an arts and language festival by and for African creatives across the UK, West and East Africa, curated by Open Arts Foundation. In June 2025, British-Nigerian architectural designer and artist, Antoinette Yetunde Oni, will collaborate with local northern Nigerian textile artisans on an art installation recounting the story of the region's long history of textile production. Yetunde Oni will also lead a fellowship and workshop for ten emerging artists on socially engaged creative practices.

'Waste Not Want Not – Up-cycled' is an artist residency bringing together Turkish artist Elif Ağatekin and Welsh artist, Bonnie Grace, over ten days in June 2025. Drawing on themes central to the festival’s (International Ceramics Festival, UK) emerging concerns of sustainability, the artists’ work will include sherds from important historical ceramic sites in Wales as well as contemporary industrial ceramic waste. The residency will include demonstrations at the festival, an exhibition at Aberystwyth, and displays and outreach workshops at Ruthin and Nantgarw.

The 13th edition of Liverpool Biennial, UK (7 June – 14 September 2025) ‘BEDROCK’, will examine the city’s foundations, from the sandstone bedrock of the city and region, pavements and distinctive architecture, to the civic, colonial, and personal beliefs that ground people and places in it. The Biennial will invite a new commission from the award-winning Ugandan multi-disciplinary artist Odur Ronald who mainly works with and explores the multi-faceted possibilities of aluminium printing plates.