Ten Thousand Suns
Curated by Cosmin Costinas and Inti Guerrero
24th Biennale of Sydney, White Bay Power Station
9 March – 10 June 2024

Petrit Halilaj (Kostërc, Kosovo, 1986) and Álvaro Urbano (Madrid, Spain, 1983) will participate in the 24th Biennale of Sydney taking place between the 9th of March and the 10th of June, 2024. The exhibition titled Ten Thousand Suns curated by Cosmin Costinaş and Inti Guerrero will open on Friday 8th of March, 2024. The Berlin-based artists will present the project Britz & Mitte (2024) at the heritage-listed White Bay Power Station. The project will consist of a series of unannounced performances throughout the city and culminating with a main performance on the 8th of March at the historical electrical plant that will open to the public for the first time in over 100 years.

Neither wild, native, nor domestic, foxes are a city’s strange neighbors – moving under the cover of darkness they traverse the unmapped spaces between public and private spaces stealthily yet confidently.

Inspired by the fox’s stalking nature, artists Petrit Halilaj and Álvaro Urbano engage with the blurring of human and non-human worlds through Britz & Mitte. Created with both artists wearing hyper-realistic fox costumes and using replica fox paws as brushes, the piece is painted in soot not unlike the coal dust that would have once coated White Bay Power Station. Making a home of the in-between spaces, as a fox does, the work muddies the boundaries between the playful and bleak, the untamed and methodical.

Using their fox alter-egos to bridge the gap between lost natural and industrial worlds, Halilaj and Urbano pay tribute to the many layered geographies of urban landscapes. Appearing as if it were a series of cave paintings, the work imagines a past which calls out through history like a fox screams in the night.

Petrit Halilaj, Álvaro Urbano, Britz & Mitte, 2024; Two fox costumes made of fabric, fake fur, thermoplastic, acrylic paint; Dimensions variable; Performance view, Biennale of Sydney 2024

Petrit Halilaj, Álvaro Urbano, Installation view of 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, White Bay Power Station, Sidney, 2024

Photo by: Document Photography.