Pandemic Informed Venice Biennale to Highlight Women


Within two years of the New York-based curator Cecilia Alemeni He had to edit the 59th edition. Venice Biennale – that the pandemic has forced a one-year delay and 400 studio visits have to take place on Zoom – the world around him has changed.

Humans grappled with big existential questions about the purpose of life, issues of inequality, and the health of the planet. There were moments of dystopian apocalypse and hopeful reinvention.

These topics are informed by Alemani’s iteration of the Biennale, the world’s longest-running contemporary art study, details announced Wednesday.

The majority of female and gender-nonconforming artists reflect “a deliberate rethinking of the centrality of men in art history and contemporary culture,” Alemani said in her official announcement.

The artists at the biennial deal with environmental concerns, communication with nature, identity politics and ecological activism. There are Black artists from Haiti, Senegal, Zimbabwe and the Republic of the Congo.

More than 180 of the 213 artists are in the sprawling Giardini park (anchored by the Central Pavilion), the Arsenale, a former shipyard, and elsewhere in Venice, which opened to the public on April 23 and runs until November 27. Five countries will participate for the first time: Cameroon, Namibia, Nepal, Oman and Uganda.

As if in stark contrast to the ever-warm US art market, few of the artists are recognizable American names, and these emerging stars include Barbara Kruger, Nan Goldin, Louise Nevelson, Ruth Asawa, and others. Simone Leigh Who is the first Black woman to represent the United States in its national pavilion?

director Alemani and chief curator High Line Art, He took the 2017 children’s picture book “Milk of Dreams” as his starting point, featuring surrealist painter Leonora Carrington’s characters such as Humbert the Beautiful, who befriends a crocodile, and Signor Mustache, who has two faces. and dances.

These transformational stories, first painted on the walls of Carrington’s home in Mexico City, inspired Alemani’s vision for the Biennial. “Carrington was talking about how we define life, what separates us from other living things, can we imagine a world where the body can transform and become something else?” Alemani said in an interview.

The biennial was organized around three themes inspired by the artists themselves. The first is the representation of how objects can transform. Artists in a variety of mediums and techniques are “trying to spread out of the canvas,” with mechanical devices in some cases interacting with various forms of life, Alemani said.

a video by Egle Budvytytefor example, it depicts a group of teenagers lost in the Lithuanian forests; Swedish Sami resistance artist Britta Marakatt-Labba uses embroidery to embroider snowy landscapes of nature; surrealist artist Bridget Tichenor (1917-1990) used the Renaissance tempera painting technique to create images of magical realism.

The second theme is the relationship between individuals and technology – “how culture operates polarities between, on the one hand, thinking that technology can make our lives and bodies better, eternal and invincible, and on the other hand,” he said. that is, fear of machine hijacking and the existence of artificial intelligence.”

This fear was exacerbated by Covid-19, emphasizing “how mortal and finite we are. At a time when we want to be with and share with others, all our relationships are mediated through digital screens.”

A new video from the media artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson Korean artist investigating the birth of artificial organisms Geumhyung Jeong evokes robotic bodies that can be reassembled.

The third theme is the connection between bodies and the Earth. Alemani said she was especially inspired by the scientist and feminist theorist. Silvia Federicia world without hierarchy or domination – a world where man is not at the top of the pyramid – who instead imagines a “world of symbiosis and magic”.

“The idea of ​​magic is something you’ll see quite a bit,” Alemani continued, “especially at the Arsenale, which itself is the factory of wonders.”

Important to Alemani are the five small, historical episodes he calls time capsules, or “spectacles within a spectacle,” aimed at reinforcing connections, providing layers and context. “I was very interested in creating a dialogue between different generations,” he said.

These capsules will bring together the works of 90 artists, especially 20th century artists.

In a gallery in the Central Pavilion, the first of five capsules features work by female avant-garde artists such as Eileen Agar, Leonor Fini, Carol Rama, Dorothea Tanning, and Remedios Varo.

Another capsule was inspired by “Materializzazione del Linguaggio”, the first historical retrospective of women’s art, held at the Biennale in 1978. Mirella Bentivoglio, Mary Ellen Solt and Ilse Garnier (now mid-90s). There are experiments such as hand-sewn tapestries by the French Surrealist writer Gisèle Prassinos and anagram poems by Unica Zürn.

Hannah Höch from Germany, Aletta Jacobs from the Netherlands and Amy Nimr from Cairo pay homage to artists who are no longer alive. “This isn’t just a young artist show,” Alemani said. “An exhibition like the Venice Biennale should not necessarily reflect the last two years, an obsession with the new.”

Alemani said he was interested in “rewriting” those whose stories were “untold” – including those of the Inuit artist – who have been removed from the canon of contemporary art. Shuvinai Ashoona, Sudanese painter Ibrahim Al Salahi and Native Venezuelan artist Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe.

Alemani is the first Italian woman to host a Biennale and has deliberately included a large number of Italian female artists. Ambra Castagnetti, Giulia Cenci and Chiara Enzo, to give them a belated recognition. “This show is taking place in Italy, not New York, and the gender situation is different,” Alemani said. “I realize that an exhibition doesn’t change things, but I hope it can have symbolic value.”

“If I look at the 127-year history of the Venice Biennale, the percentage of women’s participation is very low,” she continued. “I want to make room for voices that have been silenced in the past.”



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