Event type: Exhibition

The title of this work, ‘Bunchlann/Buncharraig’, translates from Irish Gaelic as ‘Origin Family/Bedrock’. It speaks directly to the subjects of community, resistance, diaspora and places of belonging that define the theme of Liverpool Biennial 2025. Alice Rekab uses their own personal experiences of Irish, Black and multi-heritage family life to explore hybrid identities, shared traditions and legacies of migration.

Led by artists Tobi Balogun, Maïa Nunes and Aisling-Ór Ní Aodha, the group – all of whom had personal or familial connections to migration – shared stories about their heritage and culture through personal belongings, and explored self-expression through the mediums of hip-hop dance, language and voice.

Further work by Alice Rekab is exhibited at Bluecoat.

Courtesy of the artist. Co-commissioned by Liverpool Biennial and EAF25 (Edinburgh Art Festival), with support from The Ampersand Foundation, Culture Ireland, the Arts Council Ireland Visual Arts Project Award and Liverpool ONE.

Kara Chin is an artist working across animation, ceramics, sculpture and installation. She uses unexpected materials, strange scales and fragmented references and imagery to create sculptures which reflect on our day-to-day relationship to fast evolving technology and the world around us. 

She refers to these intricate works as ‘litter fossils’ as they reference common sights and objects found in cities such as takeaway cartons, seagulls and other city detritus. The trail of works links Liverpool Biennial 2025 venues, ultimately leading us to FACT Liverpool where Chin presents a new, interactive multimedia installation. Part of the same body of work, her installation at FACT explores rage, grief and nuisance through repeated motifs such as seagulls, parking meters, and the seemingly invasive Buddleia plant often found in cities including Liverpool. Alongside references to litter seen here, they serve as metaphors for global unease and anguish in the face of economic and ecological decline. 

Further work by this artist is exhibited at FACT Liverpool. 

Courtesy of the artist and LINSEED. Commissioned by Liverpool Biennial, with support from Suling Mead. 

Informed by her cross-cultural heritage, Anna Gonzalez Noguchi’s art practice is based on a mixture of local research and personal or familial experience. She removes, relocates and reconstructs objects in different geographic territories to give them new meaning and to highlight the fragility of memory and experience.

Plants from the city’s botanical archives, such as the Himalayan Balsam, are engraved onto the work. They were originally collected for ornamental or medicinal use, or for their ‘splendid invasiveness’ – the rapid and widespread growth of certain non-native plants.

From a distance, the work’s metallic surfaces can act like mirrors, causing the structure to flicker in natural light or camouflage into its surroundings. The reflective nature of the work reference show people, wealth and culture migrated to a new place – both throughout history and in present times – will merge to become one with wider society, its landscape and its architecture.

Incorporated into the work are benches which visitors are invited to sit on. The top of each seat features a cutout of the day of the week written in Japanese kanji characters, referencing the natural elements each character signifies. Through these cutouts, the work becomes a physical calendar, tracking days across different moments in time. By sitting alongside other visitors, we mimic the behaviour of plants, cross-pollinating with the work and each other.

Further work by this artist is exhibited at Eurochemist.

Courtesy of the artist. Commissioned by Liverpool Biennial, with support from Acción Cultural Español.

At The Black-E, Turner Prize-winning artist Elizabeth Price presents a major single channel film, supported by RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects), which centres on the architectural history of Catholic Modernist churches in post-war Britain. The artist considers how their particular architecture manifests traces of trauma and anxieties of the time, whilst also telling a story of 20th century migration.

*Please note that the entrance to the exhibition is on Nelson Street, next door to Pine Court*

Amy Claire Mills presents an interactive, sensory installation, co-commissioned with Liverpool-based disability and Deaf arts organisation DaDa, supported by Paul Hamlyn Foundation. The artist advocates for creating inclusive, adaptive ‘third spaces’ that prioritise disability representation, access and care. The artist will also create a collaborative performance with d/Deaf, Disabled and Neurodivergent practitioners from the region.

Alongside work by Alice Rekab which focuses on intergenerational experiences of Irish, Black and multi-heritage family life, and Petros Moris’ extracted ‘ready-made’ mosaics, other highlights include a new film titled ‘Dear Othermother’ by Amber Akaunu which celebrates a deeply personal tale of friendship, single motherhood and alternative, matriarchal community networks in Toxteth, one of the oldest Black communities in the UK.

On the ground floor, Odur Ronald presents his most ambitious installation to date, involving a vast collection of hand-stitched aluminium passports, to address the conditions of forced and voluntary migration of African people to Europe throughout history.

Upstairs, ChihChung Chang 張致中 restages his ‘Port of Fata Morgana’ installation. The work, centred around a model ship created by the artist’s father, explores family histories, alongside the history of naval architecture and the parallels between Liverpool and the port city of Kaohsiung. Work by the artist is also on view at Pine Court.

In FACT’s foyer gallery, Kara Chin presents an interactive, multimedia installation which draws on repeated motifs such as seagulls, parking meters and the seemingly invasive Buddleia plant often found in cities. Co-commissioned by FACT Liverpool and inspired by aesthetics from Manga and apocalyptic video game graphics, Chin explores themes of rage, grief and nuisance. The project extends to the streets of Liverpool with intricate ceramic tiles appearing on routes between venues.

In Gallery 1, DARCH produces an earth, ceramic and sound installation in collaboration with residents in Sefton, who have contributed stories about their connection to the land and bedrock – physical and spiritual – of Merseyside. Co-commissioned with At The Library, elements of the project will also be available digitally on biennial.com and in-person at Bootle Library.

Also in Gallery 1, Linda Lamignan questions the different ways in which humans treat and value the natural world, whether for profit or as something to be respected and protected. A new film work references the artist’s own ancestry and traditions, the knowledge systems of animism and geology, and the long history of palm oil and petroleum extraction in Nigeria’s Delta State area, including how those materials were traded with Liverpool.

Ana Navas presents a series of ‘glass collages’ in the Lady Chapel, which draw inspiration from the colours and forms found in the clothing and objects within portraits of women from throughout art history. Among them, a newly commissioned work draws inspiration from the embroideries made by generations of women from Liverpool that are held in the Cathedral’s archives.

Maria Loizidou creates a large-scale, crocheted installation which responds to the architecture of the building; a hanging tapestry of hand-embroidered migratory birds that can be found on Merseyside. Co-commissioned by Liverpool Cathedral, Loizidou’s thoughtful installation invites us to consider our relationship with nature and explores themes of migration, coexistence and survival in a constantly changing world.

In the Hornby Library, Dawit L. Petros presents a sprawling research project that aims to re-read a historic military expedition to the River Nile from 1884-1885 – a British-led expedition which included 379 Voyageurs from across Canada and Quebec including French Canadians, Western Canadians and First Nations. The installation, which has been developed through a residency at Liverpool John Moores University, includes sound, video, books and archive material gathered and created in response to Liverpool’s own archives related to shipping and empire. The artist also shows earlier work at Tate Liverpool + RIBA North.

Nandan Ghiya’s new sculptural work, co-commissioned with Public Arts Trust India, interprets the Samudra Manthana – a major episode in Hinduism that translates to ‘churning of the ocean’ in Sanskrit. Drawing inspiration from the textiles and patterns of heritage buildings in both Liverpool and Jaipur, the artist creates ‘sculptural photographs’ to explore themes relating to the exploitation of natural resources, rising water levels and racial conflicts.

In Gallery 2, Widline Cadet presents an exhibition of photography works created between 2021 and 2024, centring around her family’s lived experience of emigrating from Haiti to the United States. The works explore the complexities of Black diasporic life and survival, as well as the fragility of memory, using motifs which refer to her past and her ancestry.

Upstairs, Katarzyna Perlak presents a new, collaborative film set in the bedrooms, hallways and ballrooms of the iconic Adelphi Hotel, once a popular destination for wealthy travellers on their way by boat to North America via Liverpool. Co-created with local award-winning filmmaking organisation First Take and participants from their REEL: Queer programme, the film adopts a non-linear, poetic narrative and references the genre of horror to explore longing and Queer identity. The artist also shows work at Walker Art Gallery.