The Venice Biennale 2022 presents ‘The Milk of Dreams’ curated by Cecilia Alemani and involves 213 artists from 58 countries, 180 of whom have never had works in an international arts exhibition. It’s an awesome exhibition full of visual surprises and thought provoking works.
In the 127 years of the Venice Biennale never has there been a majority of women and gender non-conforming artists, ‘a deliberate re-thinking of men’s centrality in the history of art and contemporary culture’.
The exhibition ‘is not about the pandemic but it inevitably registers the upheaval of an era…arts and artists can help us imagine new modes of coexistence and infinite new possibilities and transformation’.
The title of the exhibition is from the book by surrealist artist, Leonora Carrington in which she describes ‘a magical world where life is constantly re-envisioned through the prism of the imagination.’
‘The Milk of Dreams’ lives up to Carrington’s magical and imaginative world and Alemani’s re-thinking of art and artists. A visual pictorial of the Dreams……a selection.
The Biennale takes places across two distinct venues in terms of place and space: Arsenale and Giardini.
‘The Milk of Dreams’ exhibition and the Participating Country Pavilions sit uneasily together given one is theme based and curated and the other at the whim and leanings of an artist selected by each country’s arts /cultural administrative and arts interests.
The Biennale straddles these two venues; Arsenale provides a post industrial environment with its huge spaces and horizontal layout for both the exhibition and the Country ‘pavilions’ and the Cenral Pavilion Giardini a garden setting with a site providing a white walled exhibition space, with rambling rooms and the self styled built and restored separate Country Pavilions.
The buildings themselves are an introduction to each of the 80 participating countries persona across the two sites. The Country Pavilions do not represent their art but reflect the chosen art……but do provide some insight into the the range of interests, issues and socio-economic politics that inhabit the mind of the artist and the material used to inform the viewer and participant. In the following order: Italy, Belgium, Ukraine, Canada, Latvia, France, Lebanon, Spain, Hungary, Poland. Uruguay.
'Relocating a structure' Maria Eichhorn
The German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale has history and it is being exposed. Artist, Maria Eichhorn, in her work titled ‘Relocating a structure’ has taken on the role of ‘artecheologist’ to reveal a Nazi past that is revealed in her dig into the fabric of the building. Her original idea was to relocate the German Pavilion for the duration of the Biennale and then return it to its site. The space would lead to a reflection on its past and perhaps the role of national pavilions.
The building was originally a Bavarian Pavilion built in in 1909 and was renamed the German Pavilion in 1912. In 1938 Hitler instructed and over sighted changes that altered its face to the world, adding columns and a design that reflected a fascist aesthetic. He attended the Venice Biennale and opened the building. Its fascist past is reinforced by the removal of Italian Jews from Venice in via staging places to the Santa Lucia Railway station.
Collateral Events
Field - Pedro Cabrita Reis
Outside of the official Venice Biennale program is 'Field' by Portuguese artist Pedro Cabrita Reis. This stunning work installed in Chiesa di San Fantin church addresses the ‘field’ between ideas of right and wrong. A space of light. He quotes Rumi to say ‘I will see you there’. He has also made multiple public space works. Check them out at cabrita-field-venice.com
It’s a work that challenges notions of construction and reconstruction. The artist laid the lighting foundations and covered the entire space with building rubble. The cracks in the rubble enabled the light through and represented faith or hope for the future. Stunning concept and execution. His work sits outside the Biennale as a Collateral Event.
An Archeology of Silence - Kehinde Wiley
American artist, Kehinde Wiley in ‘An Archeology of Silence’ exposes the ‘unseen members of Black and brown communities all over the globe, by inserting them in the dominant poses drawn from famous compositions of western paining’. It’s an overwhelming depiction of lives that matter and is stunning in its detail. A site and sight that asserts its impact as a Collateral Event to the Biennal.
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