The First Walker Street Biennial

The proliferation of biennials, usually involving the importation to small locales of an internationally recognized curator, raises enormous questions of power and responsibility. Maurizio Cattelan offered an implicit critique (or maybe just enjoyed a vacation in the sun) by staging a Sixth Caribbean Biennial in which no works of art were on view. In reverse fashion, documenting the art of a biennial that never took place serves the function of making more visible some existing work, by Brandy Worsfold and Tom Wegrzynowski. The exhibitions of which installation shots appear in this book took place elsewhere and were seen by few people. This documentation, which was briefly available in one Walker Street gallery, has the potential of reaching more viewers than a physical Walker Street Biennial would have had. It should be noted that Walker Street is not only a street with two extremely hip galleries, it is one of the shortest streets in Atlanta, making it the ideal location for this not-quite-virtual biennial.