Affected by the epidemic, after a one-year extension, the 59th Venice Biennale will open tomorrow (April 23) local time.
The Paper learned that this biennale set a record for the highest number of female artists, with more than 80% of the participating artists being women. Titled "The Milk of Dreams," a short story by the British-born Mexican surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, the exhibition explores posthuman, metamorphism, ecology, and more, and the exhibition itself is like a renaissance of surrealism in this era.
Poster of the 59th Venice Biennale
As curator of the 59th Venice Biennale, Cecilia Alemani is the first female curator of the exhibition in 127 years, while her husband, Massimiliano Gioni, who curated the 2013 Venice Biennale. In addition, the Biennale set a record for the highest number of female artists, with more than 80% of the 213 artists participating in the main exhibition", "Milk of Dreams". In this regard, Alemani admits that she does not want to advertise a "feminist exhibition", but since the establishment of the Venice Biennale, the participation of male and female artists has been unequal, which is a fact that people should understand. "We still need to reflect on history, to reflect on who is part of history and who is excluded."
Cecilia Alemani
There are about 80 new works in this year's Venice Biennale. Some of them are commissioned works, while others are works created by artists over the past few years. In addition, history is one of the highlights of this year's Venice Biennale. Alemani has five "time capsules" in the exhibition, most of which are museum loans, echoing the themes of the exhibition, such as deformation, the cyber concept, or the body as a container, but not from the perspective of art history. "So for the body deformation, you can say it is through a surrealist perspective, a futuristic perspective, or it can be the perspective of some Dada artist, or even the perspective of a Bauhaus artist." "I'm trying to tell a story that's not necessarily the kind you'd read in art books, but focuses on female artists — who, in my opinion, often have very similar strategies and approaches to men," Alemani explains. ”
Exhibition site of the 59th Venice Biennale
Alemani thought of "deformation" at the beginning of the curation, and after the epidemic began and the exhibition was postponed, she tried to expand this context, to think further about how our bodies are with technology, and to compare this change with the changes in the earth and climate. "This is largely the end of my conversation with the artists through Zoom. A lot of artists have talked about this. Because of gender, race, and identity, metamorphosis has been with us for the past thousand years. Suddenly, it was in tune with the pandemic. ”
Brick House (2019), Simone Leigh
The exhibit at the Armory begins with Simone Leigh's large bronze bust of a black woman, Brick House (2019), next to five mysterious figurative paintings by the late Cuban printmaker Belkis Ayón. They demonstrate the importance attached to painting and sculpture in the main exhibition of the Venice Biennale, as well as the attention paid to mythological, mystical and monumental themes. The exhibition's name, "Milk of Dreams," comes from a short story by Leonora Carrington about children transforming into surreal paintings that depict fantastic indoor scenes as well as ecstatic landscapes, where the differences between animal and human life are erased. In his preface to his curatorial exhibition, Alemani writes, "Many artists are imagining a posthuman environment that would challenge the modern Western understanding of humanity as the standard for the cosmic and all-things scale, which assumes that the white male "rational man" is a universal ideal." ”
Bird Superior: Portrait of Max Ernst by Leonora Carrington
Lebanese artist Ali Cherri's Titans (2022) consists of three figurative sculptures made of clay, based on other ancient gods such as Ramassou, combining animal and human figures. The work strongly evokes the Biennale's exploration of the theme of secular surrealism. Next to Titan is another of Shelly's works, The Three-Screen Image, Of Men and Gods and Mud (2022), which lyrically tells the story of our lives as water, earth and planets. At one point, a voiceover sounded: "If God has shaped us in His own image, then God must have been created from clay as well." "The image of the Titan shows that our bodies are more connected to nature than we thought. The text on the wall links the work to donna Haraway's concept of slime in When Species Meet (2007).
Titans (2022), Ali Sheri
This biennale undoubtedly reflects the "renaissance" of the surreal currents in today. The Louisiana Museum in Copenhagen's exhibition Fantastic Women and the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Surrealism Beyond Borders in New York both present surrealism from a new perspective, no longer viewing the movement from the perspective of classic European men, but instead including women and different countries. In Alemani's view, people today are living in a world similar to the era of the Surrealist movement. "Surrealism was conceived from the effects of the First World War... Today, many artists are using similar methods to respond to the times. ”
Venice Greentown Garden (Giardini)
The Venice Biennale takes place in two sprawling exhibition grounds: the Giardini, a public park in Venice, and the Arsenale, which provided naval power to the Republic of Venice. In addition to the main exhibition, the exhibition industry of each national pavilion is distributed in two major exhibition venues. A total of 80 countries participated in the pavilion this year, five of which were exhibiting for the first time: Cameroon, Namibia, Nepal, Oman and Uganda.
Painting by Maria Prymachenko
The Chinese Pavilion of the Venice Biennale is curated by Zhang Zikang, director of the CAFA Art Museum, with the theme of "Yuanjing", trying to present the development system of Chinese art from the personal and technical levels. "As a national pavilion, what should bring to the world is the most cutting-edge artistic development of a country in the past two years." In recent years, science and technology have greatly promoted Chinese art. Talking about Chinese art in this era, it is difficult to clearly explain the development of Chinese art without mentioning art and technology. Zhang Zikang introduced. As an echo of the main exhibition "Milk of Dreams", "Metaverse" will explore the combination of humans and machines.
Renderings of the "Yuanjing" theme exhibition of the Chinese Pavilion
The National Pavilion has always reflected the international geopolitical situation, and this year, everyone is paying attention to the Ukrainian National Pavilion and its artist Pavlo Makov's "The Fountain of Exhaustion" A painting by the late Ukrainian artist Maria Prymachenko appeared in the main exhibition at the last moment of preparation for the Biennale. At the same time, both the Russian National Pavilion and Russian artists have chosen to withdraw from this year's Venice Biennale. The Other Nations Pavilion has made its own history in a quieter way. For the first time, the American Pavilion will be represented by African-American female artists to present Simone Leigh's work. The UK Pavilion will also present its first solo exhibition of African-American women artists, featuring the work of Sonia Boyce.
British Pavilion, Venice Biennale
(This article is compiled from the New York Times, The ArtNewspaper, Frieze and Vogue.)
The 59th Venice Biennale will run from 23 April to 27 November 2022.