The 2023 International Women's Biennale, now in its 4th edition, will be open to the public from Saturday, October 28, 2023, to Sunday, January 7, 2024, in Trieste, at Warehouse 26 of the Old Port. The 4th edition, titled "Breathing with the World," has been curated by Eunice Tsang and organized by the International Women's Biennale Association, chaired by architect Šeherzada Ahmetović, with the co-organization of the Municipality of Trieste and the support of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region. The opening ceremony will take place on Friday, October 27, 2023.

4th EDITION
The International Women's Biennale, a unique event of its kind, provides a platform to celebrate and promote the role of women in the arts, culture, and contemporary society. Collateral events will include meetings with artists, performances, presentations, musical events, and entertainment, as well as educational moments dedicated to promoting art and culture. "Our mission is to promote women's art by offering unparalleled visibility and opportunities for emerging and established artists," says Šeherzada Ahmetović, President of the International Women's Biennale. "Through BID23ART, we aim to create a profound dialogue between contemporary art and the public, stimulating reflections and connections that go beyond conventions."

The BID23ART exhibition represents an important event in the artistic and cultural landscape, not only locally but also internationally. Visitors will have the opportunity to immerse themselves in contemporary art, discover new talents, and be inspired by different perspectives and narratives.

"Breathing with the World" is the title of BID23ART's exhibition, the 4th edition of the International Contemporary Art Biennale in Trieste. It draws inspiration from a poetic image found in one of the Sonnets to Orpheus (1923) by Rainer Maria Rilke. In these sonnets, Rilke explores the intimate connection between life and art in its various expressive forms, demonstrating how the evocative power of poetry can transform life's challenges and justify reality.

This Biennale aims to explore, through an innovative holistic approach, the diverse forms of expression through which contemporary women artists from different generations and cultural contexts interrogate their relationship with the world - understood in its broadest sense. Here, the external, visible world is tightly intertwined with the inner world. The "breath," the vital force, the poetry of the invisible, a metaphor for an incessant and inexhaustible regenerative and inspiring power, symbolically suggests a movement of openness and connection with the world through uncharted ways of penetrating its different dimensions: the spatiotemporal, the sociocultural, and, above all, the natural dimension, which includes all living beings. It invites us to shift from our customary exclusively anthropocentric perspective to an awareness that we humans are just one of the countless forms of life to be respected.

Trieste, a historical crossroads of peoples and cultures, a city animated by the vast "breath" of the sea, seems to be the ideal place for this exhibition. Poetically evoking the theme of l'élan vital (the intuitive perception of experience and the flow of inner time), it celebrates the creative power of transformation and art's ability to express hope for the future, while simultaneously exploring the dimensions of ambivalence, criticality, and uncertainty.