Venue Name

RE-PAIR is the concept and core idea to launch the Inaugural statewide Tennessee Triennial, slated for 2023. Exhibition spaces, venues and communities prepare to present the Tennessee Triennial exhibition with the following thematic guidelines.

To heal, suture, and recompose fractured bodies. We propose a new site of encounters, with yet undefined edges, borders, territories. These will be cartographies of the mind as well as geographies of the land.

Ours is a complex time in history. Both excesses and fundamental limitations define the present moment. The planet is frail, societal contracts instable, biology in a spin of uncertainties. Technologies allure and frighten us all at once.

Can we conquer our uneasiness with an attitude that mends the fractures of our time? Can we re-pair, patch and rebuild our fragile spirits, bodies, cities, political institutions and economic relationships?

RE-PAIR asks you to pledge, to reconsider the function of the arts, the meaning of art as a critical force in society and enhancer of human experiences. Can Art galvanize our energies to rebuild our towns with forums, and ideas that bring solutions to isolation, poverty, despair?

RE-PAIR Tennessee Triennial invites us all to participate deeply as artists, organizers and public(s) in the invigoration at the intersection of art and sociability. The overarching theme of Re-pair solicits an empathetic consideration of context and space, history and commons, deeply woven into the fabric of Tennessee’s roots. In order to Re-pair, one must locate what is at fault, in order to heal, one must find the wound. Re-pair is all in love. The Tennessee Triennial is a beautiful opportunity, in this incredible moment, to reciprocate across the state to spotlight our community of artists and public(s) through collaboration and through opening the lines of communication locally and to anyone who has roots across the global south, and across the world. To Re-pair is to straddle Art and Sociability, a feeling, an action, a soft touch.

The statewide Triennial/Biennial model for exhibition is inherently collaborative, horizontally themed and externally communicated. Programs can bridge communities, disciplines, and geographies. The global spotlight should be on the artists of Tennessee, the rich history of arts throughout the state’s history, the hard work and rich array of spaces and organizations and this opportunity to engage a global conversation on art, democracy and our shared experience.