ISTRIA.- The Industrial Art Biennial (IAB) is an international multi-location biennial exhibition of contemporary art and new artistic practices, established by the art-activist collective and association Labin Art Express XXI (L.A.E. XXI) based in the former mining complex Pijacal in the town of Labin, as a platform for presenting and promoting new, socially engaged artistic practices, which deal with the ambiguous relationships between art and industry, as well as between art and the built and natural environment. After the pilot project in 2014, the next four editions (2016, 2018, 2020 and 2023) have successfully established the Industrial Art Biennial as a strong alternative to the processes of globalisation, and the dominance of cultural and political centers of power that impose certain conventions within contemporary culture and art, shaping local cultural landscapes. The Industrial Art Biennial therefore invites artists to explore the broader concept of the “industrial” in contemporary art, taking into account the local and regional specificities of Istria, with the aim of strengthening local/regional identity and increasing its importance, visibility and recognition within the European cultural space.
L.A.E. XXI announced the fifth Industrial Art Biennial (IAB 05), running from October 24 to November 30, 2025. It takes place in numerous locations in the Region of Istria, from galleries to spectacular ex-industrial and outdoor sites. Entitled The Vast Automaton, it is curated by an international curator duo, Bani Brusadin and Giulia Colletti.
There is an uncanny similarity between the old mining industry, a production machine lying beneath the earth’s surface perpetually cloaked in obscurity, whose only traces are the remaining overground facilities or the illnesses on workers’ skin and lungs. The current scenario poses a similar challenge, but at a rampant speed and intensity.
What is industry, when industrialisation runs through data streams and convoluted decision-making processes? Where to look when there is apparently nothing to look at? When machines and sensors do the job of seeing and understanding instead of you? How can you orient yourself when you only get blurred shadows of what industrialisation is really setting in motion? How do you reclaim agency and redefine justice? In this terrain crumbling beneath our feet, we are requested to imagine the unimaginable.
The curatorial rationale unfolds through the six main threads, based on the artistic practices and projects that the biennial hosts.
Spectres of the Geogothic / Mythologies of Calculating Machines / Ghosts in the Machine / Infrastructures of Fear, Cruelty, and Collapse
Inverse Gravity / Spells and Antidotes / Mythologies of Calculating Machines.
The Vast Automaton explores the emergence of mega-structural landscapes, spanning energy infrastructure, mining regions, industrial automation and their far-reaching impact on both human and non-human life. Addressing the ongoing polycrisis rooted in 20th-century industrialisation, it opens space for alternative visions of the present. This edition investigates automation, extractivism, and critical technologies aiming to unveil unseen facets of contemporary industrialisation.
Spanning four clusters (Labin, Raša, Pula, Vodnjan), the programme brings together site-specific works, installations, and films to examine shifting power relations and reimagine our entanglement with technological systems, emerging subjectivities, and the planet, by a diverse group of artists originating from Australia, Belarus, China, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Egypt, Germany, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, South Korea, Switzerland, Sierra Leone, UK, and the USA, whose practices resonate with the region’s historic, industrial and environmental legacies.
Artists: Andrej Beštak and Anja Leko, Živa Božičnik Rebec, Alice Bucknell, Heba Y. Amin, Maks Bricelj and Ema Maznik Antić, Mark Cinkevich and Anna Engelhardt, Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler, Sophie Cundale, Sandro Djukić, Laibach Kunst, Aleksandra Domanović, Ayoung KIM, eobchae, Laibach Kunst, Lawrence Lek, Daniel Felstead & Jenn Leung, Chuang Liu, Serin Oh, Gerard Ortín Castellví, !Mediengruppe Bitnik, !Mediengruppe Bitnik with Selena Savić and Gordan Savičić, Abu Bakarr Mansaray, Minha Park, Rich Pell, Tanit Plana, Cemile Sahin, Nestor Siré, Suzanne Treister, Marina Xenofontos, Dunja Zupančič and Dragan Živadinov.
The Biennial includes a collateral exhibition from the FLUX project at Gallery Novo in Pula, featuring works by female artists who have explored blockchain-based practices through an open and accessible training programme co-funded by the European Union.
