The Environmental Biennale and the Hydrological Turn: A Critical Visit to the IJsselbiënnale

Concluding its fourth edition in the summer of 2025, the IJsselbiënnale represents a paradigmatic shift in the creation, curation, exhibiting, and experience of environmental art. Spanning the 127 kilometers of the hydro-rehabilitated IJssel River in Eastern Netherlands, the biennial positions the waterway as both protagonist and active agent in artistic engagement. This review essay offers a critical reflection informed by a visit to the 2025 edition and situates the outdoor exhibition within the emerging curatorial framework of the hydrocene. This conceptual approach redirects attention away from the dominant mode of recent biennials—which often foreground ecological crisis through catastrophic rhetoric—toward a model grounded in attentiveness, collaboration, and community-based practices.