La Biennale di Venezia

May You Live in Interesting Times

Commissioner: Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles.
Curator: Anne-Claire Schmitz.
Exhibitors: Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys.

Open to the public at the Giardini and the Arsenale, the 58th International La Biennale di Venezia art exhibition, titled ‘May You Live In Interesting Times’, is curated by Ralph Rugoff and organized by La Biennale di Venezia. The Exhibition developed from the Central Pavilion (Giardini) to the Arsenale and includes 79 participants from all over the world. Four countries participated for the first time at the Biennale Arte: Ghana, Madagascar, Malaysia, and Pakistan. The Dominican Republic exhibits for the first time at the Biennale Arte with its own national pavilion.

From Ralph Rugoff, the curator —

“May You Live in Interesting Times will no doubt include artworks that reflect upon precarious aspects of existence today, including different threats to key traditions, institutions and relationships of the “post-war order.” But let us acknowledge at the outset that art does not exercise its forces in the domain of politics. Art cannot stem the rise of nationalist movements and authoritarian governments in different parts of the world, for instance, nor can it alleviate the tragic fate of displaced peoples across the globe (whose numbers now represent almost one percent of the world’s entire population).

But in an indirect fashion, perhaps art can be a kind of guide for how to live and think in ‘interesting times.’ The 58th International Art Exhibition will not have a theme per se, but will highlight a general approach to making art and a view of art’s social function as embracing both pleasure and critical thinking.”

Ruoff continues, “the Exhibition focus on the work of artists who challenge existing habits of thought and open up our readings of objects and images, gestures and situations. Art of this kind grows out of a practice of entertaining multiple perspectives: of holding in mind seemingly contradictory and incompatible notions, and juggling diverse ways of making sense of the world. Artists who think in this manner offer alternatives to the meaning of so-called facts by suggesting other ways of connecting and contextualising them. Animated by boundless curiosity and puncturing wit, their work encourages us to look askance at all unquestioned categories, concepts and subjectivities. It invites us to consider multiple alternatives and unfamiliar vantage points, and to discern the ways in which “order” has become the simultaneous presence of diverse orders.”

labiennale.org

 

Belgium Pavilion

Mondo Cane

Commissioner: Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles.
Curator: Anne-Claire Schmitz.

Mondo Cane by Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys is a display of the human condition. The exhibition features a group of automated puppets set amongst a series of large drawings of pastoral scenes and steel grids that fence off the pavilion’s lateral recesses. Some of these puppets are craftsmen – a musician, a shoemaker, a knife grinder, a spinner – who faithfully exercise their respective skills. It is a utopian world, pure and clean. 

Around the edges is a parallel world filled with rogueing zombies, poets, psychotics, and dropouts. These two realities coexist in the same space, but appear unaware of one another. They do not touch and this segregation is evident. The pavilion acts as a true promenade, similar to a touristic or anthropological experience reminiscent of an older Europe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great Britain Pavilion

Cathy Wilkes

Cathy Wilkes’ exhibition for the Biennale Arte 2019 is bathed in natural Venetian daylight. The unadorned architecture of the British Pavilion provides the setting for an interconnected series of floor-bound sculptural installations, paintings and prints.

Through the measured process of creating her works, Wilkes experiments with all kinds of media and materials, and collects treasures and ingredients. Production – or what we see in the end – is the accumulation of all of these constituent parts. Her work recalls inchoate visions of interiors and places of loss, and meditates on the nature of love and the coexistence of life and death.

Her work also shows the disappearance and dematerialisation of life and the absence and anonymity of the author. Her works, which are all Untitled, render us all non-initiates; together we have equal capacity.

The exhibition is curated by Dr Zoé Whitley, Senior Curator at Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre. Dr Whitley is the first open-call curator to be selected by the British Council to work alongside the artist on a British Pavilion exhibition, presenting a significant international opportunity for mid-career curators.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

France Pavilion

Vois ce bleu profond te fondre (Deep see blue surrounding you)

Laure Prouvost has imagined a liquid and tentacular pavilion structured around a reflection on who we are, where we come from, and where we are headed. It discloses an escapist journey towards an ideal elsewhere, and challenges the representation of a fluid and globalised world, in which diverse unveiled and shared realities intermingle. 

A fictional film was produced over the course of a road trip on horseback through France, with performances by characters of different ages and from different backgrounds, with specific acting skills. A sculptural in situ installation enriches and develops the film in the space and the context of Venice – a floating city built on water and by water, a city of facade and backstage – and the Biennale with its notion of representation both appear as sources of inspiration. Lâchons les chevaux!

Commissioner: Institut français with the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Culture.
Curator: Martha Kirszenbaum.
Exhibitor: Laure Prouvost.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nordic Pavilion — Finland, Norway & Sweden

Weather Report, Forecasting Future

Weather Report, Forecasting Future centres around the varied relations between the human and the nonhuman in an age when climate change and mass extinction are threatening life on the Earth. It redirects our thinking towards personal choices and the responsibility of acknowledging multi-species entanglements. 

When imagining the future, humans face the need to renegotiate the existing interspecies relations. It is difficult for humans to notice life that exists on a scale different from their own. By heightening the visitors’ awareness of the materiality of the space and the artworks, and by assimilating their bodies to other life forms, the exhibition attempts to establish a connection with more-than-human agencies.

Curators: Leevi Haapala, Piia Oksanen.
Exhibitors: Ane Graff, Ingela Ihrman, nabbteeri.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Japan Pavilion

Cosmo-Eggs

Cosmo-Eggs. This collaboration between an artist, a composer, an anthropologist, and an architect aims to create a platform from which to consider the ecology where humans and non-humans coexist, as well as questions of where and how we can survive within our world. Four instances of video footage filmed by Motoyuki Shitamichi that capture ‘tsunami boulders’ washed ashore from beneath the ocean are accompanied by Taro Yasuno’s composition, reminiscent of a bird song consisting of automated sounds performed on recorder flutes, and allegories developed by Toshiaki Ishikura in reference to various local beliefs and folklore related to the tsunami. Fuminori Nousaku was inspired by the architecture of the Japan Pavilion, linking together images, music, and texts to create a unified spatial experience.

Commissioner: The Japan Foundation.
Curator: Hiroyuki Hattori.
Exhibitors: Motoyuki Shitamichi, Taro Yasuno, Toshiaki Ishikura, Fuminori Nousaku.