Biennales are a way to bring attention to artists who, despite their prolific careers, have been overlooked. They also explore themes such as colonialism, gender norms, and climate change.
After a one year delay, Alemani’s main exhibit, “The Milk of Dreams,” along with 80 pavilions from other countries opens Saturday. The fair will run through November 27. This is the fourth edition of the Biennale’s total 59 editions, all with female curators.
The top Golden Lion awards for best national pavilion were awarded Saturday to women. They went to Sonia Boyce, a British pavilion. Simone Leigh, a U.S. sculptor, won the award for best participant in main exhibition.
Alemani, an Italian curator based in New York, stated that the predominance among women artists chosen for the main exhibition “wasn’t a choice, it was a process,” Alemani said.
She told The Associated Press that she believes women artists are some of today’s most talented artists. “But let’s not forget that the Venice Biennale has had a long history with a preponderance male artists throughout its history.
Alemani stated that “Unfortunately, many gender-related issues remain unresolved.”
Alemani was born during the coronavirus pandemic, which opened as war rages across Europe. She acknowledged that art can seem “superficial” in these times. But Alemani also affirmed the Biennale’s role over the years as a “sort o seismographer… to absorb the traumas and crises that extend well beyond contemporary art.”
The Russian pavilion is still locked this year as a reminder of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. In the middle of the Giardini, curators of Ukraine Pavilion have erected sandbags. They are surrounded by stylized posters featuring fresh artwork from Ukrainian artists that represent the horrors of the two month-old war.
Leigh, an American artist, is one of the many women who are receiving long-overdue recognition at this Biennale in her mid-career. She will be both the headlining of the U.S. pavilion as well as setting the tone at main exhibit with a monumental bust depicting a Black woman, which Alemani originally commissioned to be placed in the High Line urban park in New York City.
Fusun Onur is a pioneer in conceptual art in Turkey at the age of 85. She has filled the Turkish pavilion in Istanbul with mice and cats set up in storyboard tables that address modern-day threats such as the pandemic or climate change. Although she was proud of her role as a representative for Turkey and the work that she did during the pandemic at her home overlooking Bosphorus she also acknowledged that it was late.
Fusan, a Turkish phone operator, said that she didn’t know why it was so. “Women artists work hard, but they’re not always recognized. It’s always the men who come first.
Yuki Kihara (third gender artist from New Zealand) is the representative of New Zealand. His installation, “Paradise Camp,” tells of Samoa’s Fafafine community made up of people who refuse to accept their gender at birth.
The exhibition includes photos of Fa’afafine replicating paintings of Pacific islanders by Paul Gaugin. They are reclaiming images through a process called “upcycling”
Kihara stated that Paradise Camp is about “imagining a Fa’afafine utopia where it shutters colonial homo-normality to make room for an Indigenous worldview that is inclusive, sensitive to changes in the environment.”
Uffe Isolotto created the image of Uffe Isolotto’s hyper-realistic sculpture depicting a futuristic female Satyr giving birth to a child.
This year, the Nordic nations of Norway and Sweden, Finland, handed over their shared pavilions to the Sami. The Sami is one of Europe’s oldest Indigenous groups.
The Sami Pavilion provided a brighter path to the end of the apocalypse with performances and artwork that depicted the struggle against colonialism by Sami people while also celebrating their traditional traditions.
“We have in some way discovered how we can live within the apocalyptic realm and do it while, as you know, keeping our spirits, our beliefs, and our systems of value,” said Liisa-Ravna Finnbog, co-curator.
The Golden Lion for lifetime achievement in Germany this year goes to Katherina Fritsch, German artist, whose lifelike Elephant sculpture is located in the Giardini’s rotunda. Cecilia Vicuna, Chilean poet, artist, filmmaker, and artist Cecilia Vicuna’s portrait graces the Biennale catalog covers.
Vicuna painted this portrait during exile in Chile after the military coup against President Salvador Allende. Her mother, now 97 years old, accompanied Vicuna to the Biennale.
Vicuna stated, “You can see that her spirit remains present, so that painting is like the triumph of love against dictatorship and against repression against hatred.”
