16th Lyon Biennale

Not everything in this exhibition is so sombre. At Usines Fagor, Phoebe Boswell’s intimate film Dwelling (2022) captures pairs of black British people as they learn to swim. Kim Simonsson has peppered various venues with Moss People, green fairy-like sculptures that seem drawn from manga. But such things are only light relief from the more explicitly political ones. One of the most striking exhibits, Sylvie Selig’s Stateless (2017-19), is a 50-metre-long canvas that unstintingly depicts the life and death of a doomed young refugee, aided in her plight by an anthropomorphic hare. Selig’s Weird Family (2006-22), an altogether scarier set of humanoid sculptures than Simonsson’s series, stand vigil over it. A World of Endless Promise, which includes all the artworks discussed thus far, aims to explore “moments of resilience in the face of social, political and environmental upheaval”. Often that resilience is overrun by events.