3 Jun 2022 | Opinions

The Milk of Dreams: The 59th Art Biennale (2022)

The historic exhibition in Venice returns after one year of imposed hiatus, and openly discusses issues concerning the body, ecology and communication.

DS.WRITER:

Sophia Throuvala

Image Source: arshake.com

The 59th Venice Biennale started on April 23. It is one of the largest exhibitions of contemporary art and perhaps one of the most important in the world. Since 1893, when the first Biennale was held, the exhibition has not stopped, except for World War I and World War II. For the first time in the history of the festival, the organising stopped mid-works last year due to the pandemic, taking a raincheck due to force majeure, resulting in this year's event.

The title of the 59th Art Biennale, "The Milk of Dreams", is borrowed from Leonora Carrington's book, in which the author describes a world that is constantly re-envisioned, leaving room for transformation, optimism and liberation, while at the same time talking about our incapacity to self-identify in a liberal society that ends up being oppressive. In addition, this biographical work refers strongly to the relationship between the individual and technology, and to the foundation of this relationship through the simultaneous development of the two sides.

Through this direct reference to a world that never stops, questions emerge which the Biennale itself comes to cover by making these questions its subject matter. According to the curator of the exhibition, Cecilia Alemanni, the 59th Biennale focuses on three thematic areas: the representation of bodies and their metamorphoses; the relationship between individuals and technologies; the connection between bodies and the Earth. It’s brainstorming that occurred during the years of the health crisis but it’s not about it. As the curator points out, the exhibition is not a return to normal life as defined by the constants of a past reality, but the outcome of a collective effort. It’s a return to the overcoming and rekindling of today by critical and creative art forms.

The pause - of world-shaking significance - of the festival emphasises this year's goal of something collective, which is called to redefine human change in a world of survivors -of the pandemic and climate change. Multiple artistic variants are coordinated in a large dialogue about the obligation of humans towards the planet and the other life forms that inhabit it, with the use of technology constituting a means of expression or even offering solutions. Even the exhibition set-up itself changes form, using technology as a unique organizational practice. For the first time, due to sanitary measures, the artistic director was not able to view many of the artworks first-hand or meet in person with most of the participating artists, settling for deciding through portfolios. So the exhibition itself is created and based on technology, which was the only solution so as to not miss another year. The Art Biennale is not an exhibition that tells the story of the pandemic or the climate crisis, but it is certainly one of the most "contemporary" -in art terms- events, which inevitably records the upheavals and difficulties of the time while envisioning a future that is already present. The 59th Biennale is here to fill the gap created by the media's constant preoccupation with the pandemic, to narrate everything we lost and everything that is to come.

Entries that stood out for us:

UKRAINE, The Fountain of Exhaustion. Acqua alta,

Curators: Lizaveta German, Maria Lanko, Borys Filonenko

Artist: Pavlo Makov

Image source: universes.art

Ukraine’s entry has a double meaning, with an installation-intervention, in the garden of the Biennale, of an exceptionally bold construction that has the form of a roof-kiosk. In collaboration with Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund (UEAF), Ukrainian architect Dana Kosmina creates an installation that appears all but hospitable and makes a clear reference. In the national Pavilion is a work -research- on the liquid element. Pavlo Makov’s work was created in 1995 during a period of urbanisation from which arises a new relationship between public space and the human body. In an installation -allegory- that describes the movement of rivers, which communicate, unite and separate creating a water network with the same source and different destinations, the artist talks about society and the metropolitan experience.

Piazza Ucraina by the Curators of the Ukrainian Pavilion Borys Filonenko, Lizaveta German, Maria Lanko | Image source: elculture.gr

GERMANY, Relocating a Structure

Curator: Yilmaz Dziewior

Artist: Maria Eichhorn

Image source: news.artnet.com

The site-specific work by German artist Eichhorn focuses on the history of the German Pavilion itself and the architectural development of the space throughout the years. The Bavarian Pavilion was built in 1909 and renamed German only in 1912, while during the period of WWII it was redesigned with strong references to the fascist aesthetics of the time. The new facade is imposing and awe-inspiring with the majestic "historicity" it embodies. Eichhorn reveals the foundations of the original Pavilion, demonstrating like an archaeologist the layers of the walls. Her interventions in the building are a return to a pre-war past, accompanied by city tours to places where the memory of resistance is still alive, in collaboration with the Ιstituto Veneziano per la Storia della Resistenza e della Società Contemporanea (IVESER), while also accompanied by performances by Nkisi and Jan St. Werner.

ITALY, Storia della notte e destino delle comete / History of Night and Destiny of Comets

Curator: Eugenio Viola

Artist: Gian Maria Tosatti

Gian Maria Tosatti's installation is an environment with multiple references to vocabulary taken from literature, visual arts, performance and theatre. It mainly concerns the relationship between man and nature and the element, the difficulty of balancing between the artificial and natural, the dreamy and real as well as the past and present, while there is a strong reference to post-war Italy of the 60s and the sudden industrialization, habitation and construction of urban centres that erased the existing landscape. The installed platform is taken as a reference to the famous work of Caspar David Friedrich "The Monk by the Sea", of the Romantic period. In the case of installation, the viewer can consider, like the monk, his relationship with the natural landscape, as well as the relationship of morality and profit when it comes to the exploitation of the remaining natural wealth, such as oil. Tosatti's work is an epiphany that looks to a distant past, or to a distant future where the inhabitation of the planet is not a given.

MALTA Diplomazija Astuta,

Curators: Keith Sciberras, Jeffrey Uslip

Artists: Arcangelo Sassolino, Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci, Brian Schembri

Image source: malta.italiani.it

The installation in the Malta Pavilion is an abstract approach to one of the island’s major art relics, Caravaggio’s famous altarpiece “The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist”. Using modern-day industrial materials, a moving sculpture is installed that mimics the movement of the falling head after the decapitation. Through the use of technology, small drops of molten steel fall from the "sky" into seven rectangular tanks filled with water, each of which represents a theme of the Beheading. The work attempts -prompted a classic and seemingly outdated "work of art"- to create a dialogue between art and the old or new fears and concerns of humanity. The martyrdom of St. John seems to be a reference here to climate change, war and the sufferings of mankind, narrated through the palette of an outdated artistic idiom.

EGYPT, Eden-Like Garden

Curatot: Mohamed Shoukry

Artists: Mohamed Shoukry, Weaam El Masry, Ahmed El Shaer

Image source: vimeo.com

The work of Mohamed Shoukry, Weaam El Masry and Ahmed El Shaer is a pop metaphor for the Promised Land. An installation that talks about fertility and ethics. Through a vivid depiction of the established "sacred" event of motherhood, perhaps there is a comment on desecration and the need to redefine the symbols related to fertility, as well as de-sanctifying and exempting motherhood from guilt, using a dramatic and excessive language. It is a work evoking scepticism and it concerns the eternal between the natural, necessary and abominable of human nature, placed in an environment that concerns the "Coherent identity and a torn world", as stated in the supporting text of the work.