For those who like to visit the Venice Biennale, this unique art festival is associated not only with bright expositions, but also with pompous yachts of Russian oligarchs.
Such yachts moored at the Quay of the Seven Martyrs during the past Venice Biennale
Those of them who have a weakness for contemporary art have so far tried not to miss a single such exhibition: just in time for its opening, they entered the city on their floating palaces and moored at the famous Seven Martyrs Embankment, the main artery for pilgrims of art, which runs between the two main venues of the Biennale – the Arsenale and the Giardini Gardens. This shameless demonstration of wealth and high social status was of little concern to anyone. This time it will be different: since Putin’s bombs began to fall on Ukrainian cities, Russian moneybags prefer to keep a low profile. So during the 59th Venice Biennale, which starts on April 23, the Lido will be empty. And this is far from the only thing that reminds here of the war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine.
Russian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale
The Russian pavilion will also be empty, located, like the pavilions of 27 other countries, in Giardini, the main exhibition center of the Venice Biennale. Artists Kirill Savchenkov and Alexandra Sukhareva, who were invited to represent the Russian Federation, canceled their participation in the project. They announced this on February 27 in a joint post on Facebook. “There is no place for art when civilians are being killed by rocket fire, when Ukrainian citizens are hiding in shelters, and protesting Russians are being silenced,” the artists wrote.
The curator of the Russian pavilion, Raimundas Malašauskas, an expert on contemporary art from Amsterdam, also said that he could not continue the project in a situation where Russia was at war with Ukraine and was leaving his post. At the same time, he stressed that it would be wrong to discriminate against all Russian citizens because of the actions of the country’s leadership.
Ukrainian pavilion and artist Pavel Makov
The question of whether the Ukrainian pavilion will open for a long time remained unanswered. But curator Ekaterina Chueva and Kharkiv artist Pavel Makov managed to transport the works prepared for the exposition from Ukraine to Italy. According to Makov, he sees himself “not as an artist, but as a citizen”, and at the Venice Biennale he does not represent a warring country, but sends a signal that the culture of Ukraine remains viable. At the exhibition in the lagoon city, the artist shows his project “Fountain of Exhaustion. High Water”. According to Makov, this installation symbolizes the exhaustion of society.
Pavel Makov told reporters that despite the war and the bombing, he and his family did not want to leave Kharkov. But then the artist realized that Ukraine must be represented at such a significant art show as the Venice Biennale. And after spending a week in a bomb shelter, he went to Italy – with his wife, two cats and a 92-year-old mother, who is now in Austria. The journey, which was covered by car, took a week.
Main project – for the first time under Italian curation
This year, the main project of the Venice Biennale is curated for the first time by Cecilia Alemani, an Italian art critic who now mostly lives in New York. In the entire 127-year history of the art festival in the city on the water, this is the fifth woman to become the artistic director of its central exhibition.
The list of participants in the main project compiled by her includes 213 people, and 180 of the declared artists are participating in the biennale for the first time. The proportion of men among the participants is only 10 percent. According to Alemany, in this way she wants to “challenge the figure of a man as the center of the universe.”
Participants include well-known women such as US photographer Nan Goldin, German artist Rosemarie Trockel, American artist and designer Barbara Kruger, sculptor and multimedia artist Monira Al Qadiri, a Kuwaiti born in Senegal, educated in Japan and now living in Berlin. Sandra Mujinga, a talented young artist from the Congo, also presents her work in Venice. She won the National Gallery Prize in Berlin a few months ago.
At the central exhibition, art is shown in 79 national pavilions. Five states – Cameroon, Namibia, Nepal, Oman and Uganda – have never before been presented at the Venice Biennale. A novelty of this year was the participation in the biennale of the countries of Central Asia – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
“Dream Milk” and “Dream Milk”
The common title of the current Venice Biennale, Milk of Dreams, is inspired by a book about fantastic creatures written for children by British surrealist writer, artist and sculptor Leonora Carrington (1917-2011), who emigrated from Europe to Mexico during World War II.
The main exhibition, presented in the Arsenale and the Giardini Gardens, is divided into three parts. The first is devoted to the representation of bodies and their metamorphoses – almost like in the book “Milk of Dreams”, the characters of which could have two faces or huge winged ears. The second deals with the relationship between people and technology, a topic that has become especially hot during the COVID-19 pandemic. And the third part is devoted to the connection between bodies and the Earth. As Alemany admitted, she was inspired by the work of the American scientist of Italian origin Silvia Federici, who described a world without hierarchies and domination.
German pavilion: a look into the history of Germany
Berlin-based conceptual artist Maria Eichhorn
The German pavilion, curated by Yilmaz Dziewior, director of the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, features Berlin-based conceptual artist Maria Eichhorn.
In her works, she refers to the history of Germany – especially the period when the Nazis were in power in the country – and its influence on modernity, explores social, political and economic relations. She works in various techniques: she creates videos, graffiti, books. Each of her works consists of an idea, research and visualization – and, as it were, contains an invitation “Think about it!”.
Exhibition “This is Ukraine: Defending Freedom”
Ukrainian photo artist Evgenia Belorusets
On April 23, as part of the official parallel program of the 59th Venice Biennale, the exhibition “This is Ukraine: Defending Freedom” opens. Its first part presents the monumental works of three artists who continue to live and work in Ukraine – Yevhen Belorusets, Lesya Khomenko and Nikita Kadan.
In addition, works by recognized classics – Tatyana Yablonskaya, Maria Primachenko and Stefan Meditsky are exhibited here. The exhibits of the second, international part of the exhibition are the works of the Serbian conceptual artist Marina Abramovic, the British artist Damien Hirst and the French artist JR.
The only participant from Russia
The only Russian participant in the Venice Biennale was an artist from St. Petersburg, Evgenia Machneva. Yevgenia Machneva works in the technique of trellis weaving, depicting cities, factories, plants, and machine tools of the post-perestroika period on hand-woven canvases. The artist is interested in the aesthetics of industrial decline and the place of painstaking manual labor in the era of mass machine production. “Fortunately, no one had the idea to expel Machneva because she was Russian!” Cecilia Alemani says.
“Golden Lion” – for contribution to art
German sculptor Katharina Fritsch and Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña will win the Golden Lions at the 59th Venice Biennale for their contribution to art. Among other things, Fritsch made a splash with her installation “The Rat King” (1993): sixteen black rats over 3.5 meters tall took up a circular defense, their tails tied into one giant knot.
“Fritch’s contribution to contemporary art, especially in the field of sculpture, is unparalleled. She creates figurative works that are both hyper-realistic and fantastic: copies of objects, animals and people, accurately reproduced in every detail, but turned into supernatural visions,” said Cecilia Alemani. , which will solemnly present awards on the opening day of the art festival.
The 59th Venice Art Biennale will take place from 23 April to 27 November 2022.
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