The 20th Biennale of Sydney

It was a thrilling experience to attend the Biennale of Sydney, an international festival of contemporary art held every two years in Sydney, Australia, shortly after it opened this year. It is the largest and best-attended contemporary visual arts event in the country. Alongside the Venice and São Paulo biennales and Documenta, it is one of the longest-running exhibitions of its kind and was the first biennale to be established in the Asia-Pacific region. This year's 20th Biennale, which is currently on, was curated by Stephanie Rosenthal, from Munich's Haus der Kunst. Rosenthal assembled an advisory group of 13 international curators, writers and theorists to help shape the Biennale with her.

Rosenthal's specialty is said to be movement and performance-based art, and that explains why choreographic giant William Forsythe, Boris Charmatz, and expat young Australian choreographer Adam Linder are hot tickets at this year's biennale.

In one of the more innovative ideas, the art - from 83 artists and collectives - was arranged in 'embassies of thought': Cockatoo Island (Embassy of the Real); Art Gallery of New South Wales (Embassy of Spirits); Carriageworks (Embassy of Disappearance); Artspace (Embassy of Non-Participation); Museum of Contemporary Art (Embassy of Translation); a bookshop (Embassy of Stanislaw Lem); and the Mortuary Station (Embassy of Transition).

The 20th Biennale of Sydney: “The future is already here - it's just not evenly distributed”, is presented free to the public from March 18 until June 5.

The 20th Biennale of Sydney will present the work of more than 80 artists across seven venues or 'embassies of thought' - including heritage-listed former prison and shipyard Cockatoo Island and former railyard carriage-works - along with the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and Artspace. For the first time in 2016, works will be installed at the Mortuary Station in Redfern and at other 'in between' locations around Sydney's inner west.

The writer is Editor-in-Chief, UNB and Dhaka Courier, and Chairman of Dhaka's Gallery Cosmos.