Logo

Canary Islanders are dead sick  of tourists. Local government, the PR team, even the biennial director and curator, architect Juan Manuel Palerm Salazar, have said that the Second Biennial of the Canary Islands is about hosting a cultural event for local people. Exhibitions and events are entirely in Spanish, with mostly Spanish, Italian or Portuguese exhibitors, and this year’s theme, ‘Silencio’ (silence), is a call to study the local landscape.

Silencio refers to the exploitation of the Canary Islands’ natural landscape,  first as a means of production (mainly bananas), then as a product sold to tourists. The 1970s tourism boom resulted in a raft of badly constructed and ugly hotels littering the coastline, with subsequent developments climbing cliffs and expanding the beaches.

These eyesore developments are such a hot issue that the government currently has a bill in Parliament to freeze all new tourism developments on  new land. Old hotels can be refurbished or replaced, but  the natural landscape must be preserved – the president of  the Canary Islands has said – because the island’s unique The concept is fascinating but the shows were a bit dull tourist economy depends on it.

If the concept is fascinating – the biennial as a multi-disciplinary, intensive study of the islands’ 30-year-old tango with tourism – most of the exhibitions were, frankly, a bit dull. The most interesting work, exhibited in Las Palmas on the island of Gran Canaria, was completed by the biennial’s internal research team,  which used detailed maps, documentary photographs and statistics to study the pace and spread of development.

The photography exhibition at CAAM modern art gallery in Las Palmas was another bright spot – a collection of work that documented cities in transition, including Francesco Jodice’s photo series What We Want, which charters how changing cities reveal our desires.

The architectural projects exhibited at CAAM, however, (and this goes for several of the other venues as well) consisted of projects that were several years old, previously published and only tenuously linked to the biennial theme. Most exhibits had their plans crowded, with small type, on to large illuminated boards. Models, drawings or concept sketches were practically non-existent.

In the end, a visit to this fledgling biennial is an excuse, not a reason, to visit the Canary Islands. The ‘keep it local’ biennial concept has potential. If repeated, it could result in some fascinating site-specific work. But, while I did learn a lot about the pressing issues facing the islands – from the boat people that arrive daily from Africa, to internal tensions stemming from tourism and increased multiculturalism – much of this was gleaned  from articles in the biennial programme guide. Hopefully  the biennial catalogue,  to be published later this  year, will save punters a disappointing trip by reporting and expanding on the best  of the work on show.

 Work on show in the CAAM modern art gallery in Las Palmas