The Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art launches second Biennial 5.1.23 - 9.22.23
mowna will host an online Biennial May 1 - Sept 22, 2023 featuring 94 international artists with select Biennial NFT sets minted on Tezos.
New York, NY - April 29, 2023
We are thrilled to announce the launch of the Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art's second Biennial. The 2023 mowna Biennial features 94 artists from 29 countries. In 2021 mowna hosted its first Biennial to offset the postponement of the Whitney Biennial and other exhibitions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Submissions for the 2023 mowna Biennial poured in from around the world, and we are excited and honored to put on such a strong exhibition that can be enjoyed from the comfort of your home. Some works will be available to be collected individually or as a set of NFTs on the Tezos blockchain on objkt at https://objkt.com/profile/mowna/created.
This year's Biennial gathered work through an international free open call for submissions. The Biennial includes painting, digital painting, GIFs, video art, music videos, glbs, AI, motion capture, photogrammetry, photography, ceramics, poetry, cinema, games, and dance films from a diverse group of artists ranging from emerging to established in their fields. The work reflects the tumultuous and tantalizing times we are living through.
mowna has a longstanding agit-prop responsive e curatorial style to critique, subvert, and shift situations and spaces in the art world. The mowna OUTRAGEOUS! Exhibition is the most recent example, which included over 100 women and non-binary artists to address the lack of women in the top 50 Tezos sales list for 2022 (there was only one). This exhibition shifted the Web3 space dramatically, encouraged sales on all of the exhibited work, and inspired the purchase of over $120,000 by the Tezos Foundation of women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ nfts on objkt by Misan Harriman. Past exhibitions include This Show is Curated by a Machine 🤖 in which an artificial intelligence curator was created to address the Whitney commission of The Next Biennial Should be Curated by a Machine, and the Wild Ideas and Radical Actions exhibition.
"The first mowna Biennial was a life-saver thrown overboard to drowning artists in the sea of the pandemic. The second mowna Biennial is a celebration of our survival and tenacity to continue onwards," says cari ann shim sham*, mowna co-founder and curator. "Over the last two years we have seen art, the internet, communication, technology, and financial systems radically change. We are very happy to have played a role in bringing forth a world in which artists can be paid for their fantastic work," says joey zaza, mowna co-founder and curator.
A video poem, "Vasectomy," by award-winning first-generation Colombian-American poet and artist Ana María Caballero, is a radical feminist work that questions the unequal weight placed by society on a woman's body, both in terms of reproduction and birth control. Caballero's work explores how biology delimits societal and cultural rites, ripping the veil off romanticized motherhood and questioning notions that package sacrifice as a virtue. She is the recipient of the Beverly International Prize, Colombia's José Manuel Arango National Poetry Prize, the Steel Toe Books Poetry Prize, a Sevens Foundation Grant, and is the co-founder of the digital poetry gallery theVERSEverse.
One of the Biennial mints, a candle that burns forever to protect its user from COVID "VeladoraProtectoraCovid" by Lineadeluz, shines light upon the dark years we have passed through during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lineadeluz is a Compton raised transmaterial alchemist, creating interventions from the social performance of being both IRL and online. They are now living between Los Angeles and Mexico City. Their pieces serve as visual offerings to the universe to transmute towards bountiful realities from a place of dissident presence and contemplation. They believe in the transformative power of aesthetics, and spellcasting through imaginative interplays of language and imagery.
"Marketing Keeled Free Web Like a Storm" by Benna Gaean Maris is a music video parody cover of The Buggles 1979 cult song "Video Killed the Radio Star," and is included in the Biennial mint set. Benna is an interdisciplinary artist exhibiting internationally with the purpose of raising awareness on metaphysical, human, social, and environmental issues, favoring the use of poor materials through minimalism. Maris is a frequenter of Biennials including the Metaverse Biennale 2022, the Wrong Biennale of Digital Arts, Šiluva Art Biennial, MADATAC XI - Biennial of New Media Arts 2020 - NH Eurobuilding, Madrid, Spain, BIENALSUR 2019 - Latin America Biennale Argentina / Brazil / Guatemala, the Triennale della Fotografia Italiana 2017 - Armenians Palace, Venezia, Italy, and is a returning artist from the 2021 mowna Biennial.
Some of the work from the Biennial is minted on the Tezos blockchain on objkt.com and can be purchased individually for 10 tez or all together as a Biennial set. Sales directly pay the artists 70% and fund the museum 30%. The Biennial along with all of our exhibitions will be archived in our mowna permanent collection to serve our collective future as an educational tool for researchers, a treasure trove for art lovers, and a backup storage space for our artists.
The Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art exists to provide an international online platform for the most timely, diverse, and preeminent artists. mowna is a for profit art museum, collection, and store that offers free submissions, supports artists by buying, selling, exhibiting, and promoting their work. mowna hosts shows, events, festivals, parties, and an online Biennial. mowna is an experiment, a fun, thoughtful, beautifully designed space that explores technology through unique exhibitions and interactive art experiences. mowna is an ethical art platform that is committed to the greater good for all. Conceived on October 13th, 2020 by co-founders cari ann shim sham* and joey zaza, mowna is fully funded by its visitors, a $15 per month membership provides continuous access to mowna's permanent collection to experience the wildest and newfangledest art.
mowna can be directly supported through membership. Members of the museum receive access to the museum's digital art collection, exhibitions, and events. Support for mowna via membership can be found at https://www.mowna.org/members.
To experience mowna please visit https://www.mowna.org
2023 mowna Biennial Press Assets
The Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art is open to working with press that places the interests of humanity among its priorities.
Images, video, and interviews available upon request.
For press pass and inquiries please send a message to info@mowna.org