18th Biennale de Lyon, France
19 September – 13 December 2026
Founded in 1991, the Biennale de Lyon is the most important large-scale festival of contemporary art in France. The 18thedition in 2026 is curated by Catherine Nichols. Her curatorial concept emphasises storytelling, transformation and the role of art in addressing complex social, political and environmental issues.
At the 18th Biennale de Lyon, Huda Takriti presents a new installation exploring the lingering impact of archaeological lootings in Syria over the past 14 years. Satellite images of archaeological sites in Syria show hundreds of thousands of holes dug by treasure hunters and artefacts looters puncturing and irreversibly altering the landscape through which history can be reconstructed. The new work once upon a time they thought the end would come from above explores desire turning into disaster through a cosmo-political science fiction. Borrowing its title from Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ book, M Archive: After the End of the World, the film narrates from a post-catastrophic future resulting from the extensive digging through the voices of dust particles carried by the wind. Moving across landscapes repeatedly turned over in the search for buried wealth, these dust particles bear witness to the transformation of archaeological remains into commodities and to the disappearance of the histories embedded in the ground. They speak from a future in which the present has become archaeology – telling of a shattered earth, a vanished past, and a future suspended in an endless loop of non-existence.
This two-channel version of the film was made with the support of the Federal Ministry of Housing, Arts, Culture, Media, and Sports of the Republic of Austria and in collaboration with Phileas.
Huda Takriti (born 1990 in Damascus, Syria) lives and works in Vienna. Her practice spans video, installation, painting and performance, exploring intersections of memory, political history, and archival narratives through themes of displacement, identity, and power. Trained in painting at the University of Damascus and Transdisciplinary Arts at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, she brings a painterly sensibility to time-based media. Her work has shown at MQ Freiraum, Kunsthalle Wien, and Camera Austria.
Her project at the 18th Biennale de Lyon and her exhibition at Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Italy in 2026 are her first collaborations with Phileas.
This project was aided by a research trip to Vienna by the curator Catherine Nichols in March 2025.
