Bido Lito June 2021 Issue 114

REVIEWS
haunted, not by people, but by the death of the cotton
industry, the slave trade, by its own former prosperity,
now decaying, and watching from the four empty white
plastic chairs the freedom and life of the bodies on
screen.
With both pieces, the city’s identity reforms the
work and, in turn, the works both react to and reform
the city’s spaces that they are in. There are plenty of
further pieces in the festival that are worth viewing
– Ane Graff, Jes Fan and Pedro Neves Marques in the
Lewis’s Building and Kathleen Ryan at the Bluecoat –
but where the Biennial really succeeds is where it has
utilised Liverpool’s spaces and contexts. However, it
is still clear that there is some disconnection between
the curators, the artists and the city. Linder’s Bower of
Bliss (2020) in Liverpool ONE is supposedly a Dadaesque
photocollage tribute to Liverpudlian women, yet
the only recognisably Liverpudlian elements – nestled
next to anatomical drawings of hands and pictures of
lizards – are the overly-tanned smiling woman and the
top half of a seagull. But the festival isn’t about Liverpool,
and it isn’t necessarily for Liverpool, and there will
always be a baseline level of highbrow thinking with
any contemporary art event that simply does not fit
with the levity of the Scouse wit. Will an internationallyled
festival ever fully connect to a city whose sense of
identity, and pride, and protectiveness of that identity,
is as strong as Liverpool’s? Perhaps not. But this year’s
incarnation is a step in the right direction, and one the
city can stomach. !
Emma Varley
Emma took part in Bido Lito!’s Bylines writers
programme, developing young culture writers of the
future. Bylines runs throughout the year for more
information and to find out about the next intake go
to bidolito.co.uk/workshops
“At times, the city
and the art meld
so seamlessly that
it is a wonder that
the piece had not
sprung from the
very spot it stands”
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