{"id":2323,"date":"2022-05-06T14:12:36","date_gmt":"2022-05-06T14:12:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dartmagazine.com\/?p=2323"},"modified":"2022-05-06T14:13:18","modified_gmt":"2022-05-06T14:13:18","slug":"report-from-the-59th-venice-biennale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/?p=2323","title":{"rendered":"Report from the 59th Venice Biennale"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Jen Dragon<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe great strength of art and artists is to digest the dramatic crisis of recent years and to propose it again in a creative key\u201d \u2013 Cecilia Alemani, curator, 59th Venice Biennale The Milk of Dreams<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nothing prepares the visitor to the Venice Biennale for the total arts immersion throughout the city. It isn’t just the historical collections in the Accademia, the Churches and the many municipal museums that host art historical masterpieces but during this 59th Biennale, many storefronts have been made into pop-up art galleries with installations from all over the world. Because of the vast number of venues, it is almost impossible to see all that there is to see in Venice but fortunately, many exhibits are consolidated in two main venues – The Arsenale and the Giardini Biennale. 
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Arsenale<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year\u2019s exhibition at the Arsenale emphasizes techniques that are usually associated with crafts such as weaving, ceramics, beadwork, embroidery and even horticulture are presented alongside more traditional painting and sculptural media. With this widespread employment of the more typically feminized hand-made processes, the Biennale highlights themes of women and their work. An example found in the Arsenale is the enormous totemic fabric heads of Tau Lewis, a Jamaican-Canadian artist from Toronto. Using scrap fabrics, fur and leather, these epic forms are monuments to an archaic religion or manifestations of ancient and powerful deities. Other featured artists include the open, woven forms of Japanese-American Ruth Asawa, the immense, glittering tapestries of South African artist Igshaan Adams, and the intricate, beaded flags of Haiti\u2019s Myrlande Constant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Angelus
Angelus Mortum \u00a9 Tau Lewis 2021<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Bonteheuwel\/Epping
Bonteheuwel\/Epping (detail) \u00a9 Igshaan Adams 2021<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Rasanbleman
Rasanbleman soupe tout eskbtyo<\/em> \u00a9 Myrlande Constant 2019<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Biennale Gardens<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Biennale Gardens, the overarching theme in many exhibitions is the landscape of the body. Hungarian sculptor Zs\u00f3fia Keresztes\u2019 mosaic-covered artworks are deceptively soft, pastel-colored, fluid forms evoking body parts such as eyes and lips as well as abstracted organs. Chained together, these sculptures are at once separate but inextricably linked with confrontational, pointed forms that forcibly engage the viewer. Leone d\u2019Oro winner Simone Leigh transforms the American Pavilion into a grass-thatched vernacular structure firmly manifesting the African foundation of American culture. With immense cast bronze sculptures of abstracted female forms as well as more symbolic artworks made from straw mounds, fired clay vessels and cowrie shapes, Leigh presents the bodies of African women as exploited commodities from which American wealth has been extracted. In the Nordic pavilion, three Sam\u00ec artists present the message that what happens to the Earth, happens to all. The Sam\u00ec are the last indigenous peoples of Europe whose way of life is threatened by continued Western colonialism. Floating suspended sculptures by M\u00e1ret \u00c1nne Sara use reindeer body parts, skin and fur manifesting the indivisibility of human, animal and landscape in a world where reindeer are at the heart of Sam\u00ec cosmology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Installation
Installation View of After Dreams: I Dare to Defy the Damage<\/em> \u00a9 Zs\u00f3fia Keresztes 2022<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Cupboard
Cupboard \u00a9 Simone Leigh 2022<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Gutted
Gutted \u2013 G\u00e1vog\u00e1l\u0161i<\/em> (detail) \u00a9 M\u00e1ret \u00c1nne Sara  2022<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Peggy Guggenheim Museum<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a related exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, Surrealism & Magic: Enchanted Modernity, <\/em>the paintings and sculpture by Surrealists lends a context to the 2022 Biennial theme of \u201cThe Milk of Dreams<\/em>\u201d. Inspired by a children\u2019s story written and illustrated by the artist Leonora Carrington, The Milk of Dreams <\/em>presents ideas of magic and metamorphosis – concepts at the heart of the Surrealist movement (1920 – 1950s). Typically, it is the work of Max Ernst, Salvador Dal\u00ec and Andre Breton that have defined Surrealism however this exhibition presents work by lesser known women painters such as Leonor Fini, Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington.  Curator Gra\u017eina Subelyt\u0117 presents the difference between the male surrealist perception of women subjects as magical beings and female surrealists understanding of women as agents of change. The common message of the surrealists was the combination of  alchemy, mysticism and mythology forms an oneiric realm of possibilities in a world where rationalism and logic had brought only extermination and pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
The Pleasures of Dagobert<\/em> \u00a9 Leonora Carrington 1945<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Other International Pavilions<\/strong>The Granada Pavilion resonates with the Biennial\u2019s Surrealist theme, The Milk of Dreams, <\/em>with an installation celebrating an annual performative tradition: Shakespeare Mas. <\/em>Wearing hand-crafted face coverings, robes and crowns, village men from the Carribean island of Carriacou compete in pairs to be the king of Shakespeare Mas. Hurling lines of Shakespeare plays and sonnets at one another, these actors strive to recite soliloquies from the Bard perfectly.  If one contestant mistakes their line or forgets a word, his rival strikes him with a stinging switch. There is an exuberant audience participation and the community prepares costumes and props throughout the year leading up to the event. What makes this traditional game come to life in a Venetian gallery are the exhibition of indigenous costumes, switches, paintings about the competitors and their speeches, as well as digital recordings and videos of the Shakespeare Mas displayed in the gallery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Shakespeare
Shakespeare Mas Installation at the Granada Pavilion<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Overall, there is an exuberance to this Biennial as it is the first one since the start of the Pandemic (the last one was three years before in 2019) and the convergence of energy from all over the world buoys the spirit and promotes hopefulness that the world can sometimes be a good place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"All
All Is Sacred<\/em> \u00a9 Infinity 2022<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Dragon
Dragon<\/em> \u00a9 Sabiha Khankishiyeva 2021<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Totem
Totem<\/em> \u00a9 Fidan Kim (Novruzova)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Jen Dragon \u201cThe great strength of art and artists is to digest the dramatic crisis of recent years and to propose it again in a creative key\u201d \u2013 Cecilia Alemani, curator, 59th Venice Biennale The Milk of Dreams Nothing prepares the visitor to the Venice Biennale for the total arts immersion throughout the city. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Report from the 59th Venice Biennale”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2323"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2337,"href":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2323\/revisions\/2337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}