Highlights of the 57th Venice Biennale
Antarctic Pavilion, Palazzo Molin a San Basegio, Venice
this review was written and originally published by The Brussels Times Magazine, n. 25 (Summer 2017)
The biennale by artists for the artists – this is the motto of the curator of the 57th edition, Christine Macel, the chief curator of Centre Pompidou in Paris, where she initially founded the contemporary art department. In contrast to the previous edition of biennale (which was also reviewed in The Brussels Times’ summer edition two years ago), curated by Okwui Enwezor, this year’s international art exhibition was meant to detach itself from the struggles and excessive engagement with the world of politics and return to mantra of “art for art’s sake” – “l’art pour l’art” – a claim that the only “true art” is one that is free from any utilitarian, ideological, social and political factors. Art, according to this view, is just a subjective expression of the emotional state of the particular artist.
Adhering to this ideology, Macel selected 120 artists from 51 countries to contribute to the total project in two main pavilions with an approach that appears rather light-hearted. The main pavilion in Giardini is filled with action: there is a performance of the artist inhabiting the pavilion, a 3D-printing laboratory and even Olafur Eliasson’s workshops on sunlight harvesting to illuminate the reading rooms at night.
John Waters’s “Study Art Signs” are full of strategic humour and expose the naivety of the art world becoming “hot” for those seeking new ways to feed the ego and obtain fame by any means in the neoliberal “I am a brand” culture. Taus Makhacheva poetic video artwork “Tightrope” is a reminder of the constant struggle of the artist, curator and researcher to have a say about the narratives of art. Corresponding to the spirit of a pronounced overarching concept, the installation “The Artist is Asleep” of Yelena and Viktor Vorobyev, who are based in Kazakhstan, literally speaks about the nature of the artistic production as being intrinsically independent from the narratives of politics and society. The exclusively male identity of this sleeping artist is quite symptomatic to both the place of the origin of the artists and the cultural context.
Guan Xiao, “David” (2013)
The second main venue of the exhibition, Arsenale, offers a much more coherent and scholastic picture. The large space of the former military arsenal of Venetian Republic is divided into the thematic sub-pavilions that address specific subjects of art, such as shamanism (devoted, not surprisingly, to Joseph Beuys), nature, etc. In general, the Arsenale pavilion communicates a refreshing gentle softness and femininity, despite the fact that the majority of the artists chosen by Macel are male. It seems she managed to amplify so much needed emphasis on the conversation, as opposed to aggression and conflict, which characterize our overly masculine contemporaneity.
Marcos Avila Forero, “Atrato” (2014)
Among the notable works are Marcos Avila Forero’s video artwork “Atrato”, in which he presents the result of observation and research of the Afro-Colombian community in the area of Atrato river. The artist documented the lost tradition of drumming on water as a mean of communication in the community. Another great and refreshing video artwork is by Guan Xiao - in “David” he playfully and with sharp irony addressed the issue of mindless copying of the icons without questioning and inserting their meaning.
Christine Macel’s main pavilions do not support coherency and may be questionable in terms of responding to the overarching theme of an international art exhibition, but I find this contradiction rather productive. It seems as if the occasional appearance of subjects, beyond “art for art’s sake”, is strategic (which it is most probably not). It could well be the result of the absence of total control over the production of the exhibition, as well as contributions of the artists.
Highlights of national pavilions: Finnish, Greek, Italian and Chinese pavilions
The Finnish Pavilion is located in Giardini in a container-like permanent structure. When I was told by the curator that the video in the sculptural installation lasts longer than 50 minutes, I was almost certain that I wouldn’t spend more than 2-3 minutes there, as my time during the Biennale preview, with all the meetings and things you have to see, was at a premium. But I was wrong: I actually stayed inside the container for the whole duration of the piece. The witty video installation “The Aalto Natives” by Nathaniel Mellors and Erkka Nissinen is wholesome in being political, ironic, aesthetic and anti-entertainingly repulsive at the same time, making it a sublime object of contemplation. It addresses nationalism, religion, conservatism, patriotism, escapism and so many other “-isms”. It is a definite must-see.
Nathaniel Mellors and Erkka Nissinen, “The Aalto Natives” (2017)
The Greek Pavilion in Giardini presents an immersive installation entitled “Laboratory of Dilemmas” by George Drivas. It is a narrative video installation – based on Aeschylus’ theatre play Iketides (Suppliant Women), which poses a dilemma between saving the foreigner and protecting the safety of the native, using the language of medical research. Addressing current global socio-political issues, the work deals with the anguish, puzzlement and confusion of individuals and social groups.
Roberto Cuoghi, “Imitation of Christ” (2017)
The Italian pavilion presents “Il Mondo Magico” in Arsenale with works by Adelita Husni-Bey, Roberto Cuoghi and Giorgio Andreotta Calo. Roberto Cuoghi presents a large sculptural installation, which appears like a macabre factory that produces monuments of the crucified Christ from various organic matter instead of the customary material, such as metal, bronze or wood. The pods with the mouldy, decaying icons and its parts are shown in all stages of production and decomposition. The production of ideology in material form is worth seeing. Adelita Husni-Bey made a video artwork for the pavilion in New York in which she addresses the geopolitical crisis through the lens of imagination and utopia. She brought together groups of people in intense workshops in which they try to create a new cosmology of the world. Finally, Giorgio Andreotta Calo made an installation that questions the concept of space, the limitation of its functional appropriation and concept of the expectation, as such.
Tang Nannan, Wu Jian’an, Wang Tianwen and Yao Huifen, “A Network of Intertextual and Collective Creation”
The Chinese pavilion introduces the internal cosmology itself via the complex aesthetic and conceptual dialogue between contemporary and traditional, archaeology and innovation, scholastics and criticism. Curated by artist and curator Qiu Zhijie, Dean of the School of Experimental Art at China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts, the pavilion features Tang Nannan, Wu Jian’an, Wang Tianwen and Yao Huifen. A witty conversation between the artists in a mix of traditional and contemporary mediums – from ancient theatre of shadows to robotic programming – is full of links to critical theory and post-structural thinking without aggressive attempts to rupture any of them. Special attention should be paid to the embroideries that are the result of collaboration between Yao Huifen and Wu Jian’an – incredible delicacy in aesthetics and immensely deep in meaning.
Must-see: Fondazione Prada, “The Boat is Leaking. The Captain Lied.”
Fondazione Prada does not disappoint - the exhibition “The Boat is Leaking. The Captain Lied.” is a definite top location among the art happenings in Venice this year. I would call the experience of visiting it as a trip through the mind of a child of Franz Kafka and Jean Baudrillard. It is a transmedia exhibition project, the result of an ongoing, in-depth exchange between writer and filmmaker Alexander Kluge, artist Thomas Demand, stage and costume designer Anna Viebrock and curator Udo Kittelmann. Alexander Kluge and Anna Viebrock act as “artists” for the very first time in a collaborative endeavour.
Fondazione Prada, “The Boat is Leaking. The Captain Lied.”
In this (non)-exhibition, you enter the room with the paintings after which you enter the space of the paintings and get lost in the video narratives that defy the very border between fiction and reality. The presentation is an inherent part of the changed space of the luxurious Venetian palazzo, which is transformed into an amalgamation of theatre stage, lm set and moody interior of the apartment of your recently deceased aged neighbour. This is definitely an example of the exhibition that cannot be photographed or properly described in text, video or any other one-dimensional form. It is an exhibition that you experience differently each time you attend.
The only accurate, universal description of the exhibition would be: you have to see it.