Michelangelo Pistoletto (b. 1933 in Italy) is a painter, action and object artist, and art theorist. Pistoletto is acknowledged as one of the main representatives of the Italian Arte Povera. He started to work with mirrors in 1962. His work mainly deals with the subject matter of reflection and the unification of art and everyday life. He has established the Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto (1996) and has been advocating the fusion of wide-ranging fields such as politics, economics, science, industry, education, or sociology with art. Pistoletto is considered one of the most influential artists of the late 20th century.

For the Ladonia Biennial Pistoletto has made a video project: Behind the Mirror

Gonkar Gyatso was born in 1961 in Lhasa, Tibet. He graduated from the Fine Art Department of the Central Institute of Nationalities, Beijing and from the Chelsea Art & Design College, London. He is the Co-Founder of "The Sweet Tea House Artists Association". Gyatso has exhibited his works in Dharamsala, New Dehli, London, Helsinki, Washington, Lyon, Durban, Zurich and in the Venice Biennial 2009. Gonkar Gyatso is living in London and is a visiting teacher at the London Institute.

In the Ladonia Biennial Gonkar Gyatso has made the installation Buddha@Tibet.ti

Picture in New Herald.

Cerith Wyn Evans (b. 1958, Wales) began his career as a video and filmmaker, initially assisting Derek Jarman, and then making short, experimental films during the 1980s. Since the 1990s, his work could be characterised by its focus on language and perception, as well as its precise, conceptual clarity that is often developed out of the context of the exhibition site or its history. For Wyn Evans, installations should work like a catalyst: a reservoir of possible meanings that can unravel many discursive journeys. Moreover, his work has a highly refined aesthetic that is often informed by the his deep interest in film history and literature. He has participated in numerous exhibitions: Venice Biennale (1995, 2003, 2009), 9th International Istanbul Biennial (2005) and Documenta 11 (2002) 

Florian Hecker (b. 1975, Germany) Hecker has been working with computer music, independently and in collaboration with other artists such as Angela Bulloch, Russell Haswell, Carsten Höller, Florian Pumhösl, Peter Rehberg, Marcus Schmickler, Yasunao Tone since 1996. Hecker’s works emphasize the connection of most recent as well as historic developments in computer music, hard- and software. Often working closely together with software engineers and scientists, his recent productions incorporate psycho-acoustic effects disorientating the listener’s spatial perception in live presentations and studio works. His full length solo recording, Sun Pandämonium, received the Award of Distinction at the Prix Ars Electronica 2003. 

In the biennial Cerith Wyn Evans and Florian Hecker are performing their opera No Night No Day For The Singer.

Ulla von Brandenburg (b. 1974, Germany). Her works, which range from films and performance "singplays" to abstract paper cut-outs, are derived from the pre-cinematic art forms and popular pursuits of the 19th century, including theatre and tableaux vivants, magic shows and circuses – themes that straddle reality and artifice. 

In her films, live models are carefully posed and lit in compositions that are reminiscent of either a painting or a photograph (quite often with specific art historical or theatrical references for the individual poses and the mise en scène). Her works on paper and wall drawings similarly feature attitudes, details, and references to historical source material taken from these two disciplines.

 Her contribution to Ladonia Biennial is Vilja World Making a video performance starring Daniel Birnbaum and Tobias Rehberger.

Elena Elagina (b.1949, Russia) and Igor Makarevich (b. 1943, Georgia, USSR) have been described recently as the soul of Moscow Conceptualism. But beyond that the two artists have developed a immense body of work. Moving from a naive artistic position – meaning a simple dialectial relation of the artist on one hand and the work / creation on the other – to a complex phenomenological position. They make the spectators point central to their work and move simultaneously as artistic subjects "inside" the body of their creations. This means they themselves become representations inside their own symbolic field. 

Their work responds to contemporary Russian life and culture, which they believe corrodes individual identity and seeks to efface nonconformist art. Their work is all about destroying myths - public, personal and aesthetic ones. Their art often takes the form of multifaceted constructions, such as installations or collages. 

Their work in the Biennial is the installation The Russian Idea in three pieces Soil, Arhitekton, Black Bread (2008). Picture here.

Thomas Bayrle well-known Frankfurt artist (born in 1937) and prominent representative of German art taught at the Academy of Fine Arts, Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main from 1975 to 2002.

 Like Andy Warhol, Bayrle also examined the phenomenon of the "masses" in the 1960s in his drawings, photocopy collages and film animation sequences, examining the idea of generating "superstructures" through geometric patterns of images with a variety of techniques and materials. Bayrle has characterised his work method as follows: "My view of society is flat - horizontal - (electric) field / fabric / network.

The vertical elements are plucked from the surface, like hay grass in a meadow."

 For the biennial Thomas Bayrle has produced Wallpaper For Human Beings. This wallpaper is free and can be carried round by the visitor. Photo in New Herald.

Arto Lindsay (born 1953, Richmond, Virginia) is an American guitarist, singer, record producer and experimental composer.He has a distinctive soft voice and an often noisy, self-taught guitar style comprised almost entirely of extended techniques, his guitar work is contrasted frequently with gentler, sensuous Brazilian music themes.  

With Diego Cortez— who would become the artistic director for all his solo endeavours starting in the mid 1990s — Lindsay became immersed in an art community that included Jean-Michel Basquiat, Nan Goldin, Francesco Clemente and Andy Warhol. Since then, Lindsay has included the work of Goldin, Kara Walker, Matthew Barney, Philip Taffe and Frédéric Bruly Bouabré on his albums.  

In April 2008 Arto Lindsay invented a parade "I AM A MAN" in Frankfurt. The parade included a dog parade. In the Ladonia biennial he is using elephants as parade material – together with his soft guitar and voice. An important inspiration is of course the tradition in Ladonia to celebrate the National Day (June 2nd) with an elephant parade.  

Arto Lindsay:”I AM MANY ELEPHANTS”, parade 2009  

Pavel Pepperstein (born in 1966 in Moscow) is one of the most important artists of the new, young generation of concept artists following in the wake of Ilya Kabakov. On completion of his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague he, along with Yuri Leiderman and Sergei Anufriev, founded the group of artists, Inspection Medical Hermeneutics, who, in a situation of new candour and public opinion following the collapse of the Soviet state, intentionally cut themselves off from the outside world in order to preserve a sub-cultural form of art and to distance themselves critically from a new era they regarded as lacking viable alternatives. Pepperstein versatile artistic creation comprises experimental concept art, installations, graphics, paintings, and objects, as well as aesthetic and literary texts. Together with Sergei Anufriev he wrote the novel Die mythogene Liebe der Kasten [The Mythogenic Love of Castes] (Moscow 1999) 

In the biennial Pepperstein is represented with a 3D drawing installed in a Ladonia winter landscape: Lenin skiing in Ladonia, 2009

Picture in New Herald.