Venice - Get a Pizza the Action
Hot slices from the Biennale Pavilions - April to November, 2024
There’s a kind of art snow-blindness that can set in when you’ve seen thousands of different works in a short time while rushing around. It’s like tasting a slice of every pizza on the menu in multiple restaurants, and even if that does sound quite delicious, it’s still A LOT.
It’s taken me some time to think about how on earth I can round up my ‘hot tips’ selection of the many national pavilions at the Venice Biennale. And so, leaving the pizza aside for a second, here I will attempt to slake your thirst for art through the power of that Venetian classic, the spritz (no, don’t all groan at once!).
First up: Campari Spritz – a classic for a reason, don’t miss out.
Australia
Archie Moore - ‘kith and kin’
Giardini
I said in my last post that this was kind of the Art Olympics, and the gold medal (well the Golden Lion) has gone to Australia for best national exhibition. This pavilion is quietly searing, a darkened look inside the country’s colonial past, which saw the artist draw an extensive family tree onto the black walls tracing his Kamilaroi and Bigambul relations back 65,000+ years. At the centre, sits a pool of water filled with stacks of printed coroners statements of Aboriginal deaths in state custody, testaments to the injustices wrought upon Australia’s First Nations peoples. Here’s all the stuff left out of ‘history’ brought back into the (gloomy) spotlight - kith and kin and sin.
Spain
Sandra Gamarra Heshiki - ‘Migrant Art Gallery’
Giardini
I think this is one of the spaces during my time in Venice where I truly felt a tug between a desire to linger and explore more deeply vs the general rush of things I had to do. The Peruvian artist has spun a new twist on the ‘museum of migration’, mapping out colonial era Spain’s impacts on the world through a series of classical ‘gallery’ rooms which feature paintings and installations that encapsulate a huge range of contemporary discussions around history, art history, sociology, ecology, politics and more. There’s a central room filled with natural light and designed for children to play in, where you can soak it all in a bit.
Netherlands
Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise - ‘The International Celebration of Blasphemy and the Sacred’
Giardini
Brutal and eerily beautiful. The internal walls and external signage of the pavilion are dripping with yellowy/orange paint, like traces of something yucky. This is the work of artist Renzo Martens, curator Hicham Khalidi and the Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC), an artists’ collective of Congolese plantation workers. The pieces they have created within the space reference an ancestral sculpture named Balot taken from Congo and loaned back for the duration of the Biennale by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The works are wrought in darkness and light, with one functioning as a particularly horrifying depiction of literal colonial rape. It’s a heavy but necessary stop on the tour.
Denmark / Kalaallit Nunaat
Inuuteq Storch - ‘Rise of the Sunken Sun’
Giardini
There was not a great deal of photography in the show this year, and this exhibition was something of a breath of icy fresh air. The artist explores the culture of Kalaallit Nunaat/Greenland (in past, present and uncertain future) through intimate documentary and family portraiture, digitised archival images from the decades around 1900, and a red half-circle installation representing the Kalaallit Nunaat flag. Storch finds the raw poetry in everyday life, as well as delving into his people’s spiritual connections with the natural world, through a series of different photo processes.
Germany
Yael Bartana, Ersan Mondtag - ‘Thresholds’
Giardini
This had all the queues. Ernst Haiger’s 1938 building is burdened by both the context and the style in which it was built. To put it perhaps glibly, the German effort each biennale is often basically a version of ‘how do we make this space NOT Nazi anymore?’. The main pavilion features the work of Yael Bartana and theatre and opera director Ersan Mondtag. Bartana’s ‘Light to the Nations’ is a spaceship installation and video work blending futuristic technology with Jewish mystical doctrine. It wasn’t the main event for me, which involved a further queue (unless you’re Adrien Brody, who was whisked straight in) for Mondtag’s stunning installation and performance. Inspired by his grandfather, Hasan Aygün, it tells a heart-wrenching domestic tale of a Turkish immigrant worker, employed by the Eternit asbestos factories, who died as a result of this work. Within the towering central house – built inside the pavilion and roughly daubed with soil from Anatolia – actors busy themselves with work or domestic tasks or just going to the toilet or lying on the floor. It might have been the lack of sleep or all the queues, but it was the most emotionally affecting piece I saw all week.
Round two: Select Spritz – spicy, energetic, ‘the cultured choice’.
Egypt
Wael Shawky - ‘Drama 1882 - دراما ١٨٨٢ ‘
Giardini
There was a hell of a line for this one too when I visited, but the PR very kindly pulled me in like I was Adrien Brody (I know). Shawky’s musical film ‘Drama 1882’ explores the history of Egypt’s nationalist Urabi revolution against the colonial British and French power structures in the country, in a riot of colour and classical Arabic sung by professional performers. There are also some vitrines and sculptural works in the space, but everyone’s attention was pretty fixed on the big screen. It’s also very dark in there. Verdict: worth the queue, but get ready to commit to a pretty lengthy, if fulfilling, bit of film.
Hungary
Márton Nemes - ‘Techno Zen’
Giardini
This was really good. An installation of sound and light work in combination with colourful mixed media sculptures. It does what it says on the (slightly oxymoronic) tin - if you like techno and you like zen, then you’ll probably enjoy Nemes’s work. There’s lots of colour and mesmeric sound that drags you somewhere between a meditation and a rave. I saw a bit of dancing, I saw chilling, I saw flashing lights, and I loved the central open space which melds all the elements together.
USA
Jeffrey Gibson - ‘the space in which to place me’
Giardini
Gibson’s work was another megadose of colour shone onto oppression, with indigenous and queer histories woven together through colourful beadwork sculptures. A member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, Gibson grew up all over the world, but this pavilion takes American culture in its paws, and attempts to mould it into a radical, inclusive idea of the future. There are murals, paintings, multimedia works, and a captivating club-like dance video, as well as occasional live musical goings-on. It’s a blast.
Nigeria
Onyeka Igwe, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Abraham Oghobase, Precious Okoyomon, Yinka Shonibare CBE RA, and Fatimah Tuggar - ‘Nigeria Imaginary’
Palazzo Canalin
Curator Aindrea Emelife has woven a bold range of diverse Nigerian artistic voices into a klaxon chorus from the diaspora. Off-site at the Palazzo Canalin on the Dorsoduro, there’s a warm energy to the space, which hosts a bright ceiling painting by Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, a dark monument to state violence by Ndidi Dike, a radio tower garden installation by Precious Okoyomon, and more. The real highlight here is Yinka Shonibare’s works crafted from clay, which replicate 150 objects looted from Benin City in 1897 by the British.
Round three Aperol Spritz: sweet treat/dessert.
Belgium
Denicolai & Provoost, Antoinette Jattiot, Nord, Spec uloos - ‘Petticoat Government’
Giardini
Petticoats, pounding music, newspaper presses - this is a party in a pavilion. A collective work conjured up by Denicolai & Provoost, Antoinette Jattiot, Nord, and Spec uloos, it blends Belgian, French, and Basque folkloric traditions of processional giants (big puppets) with the group’s diverse backgrounds in art, curatorial practice, architecture, graphic design, typography and cartography. What that results in, is a blast of energy, which is a welcome dessert course after some of the heavier shows.
Japan
Yuko Mohri - ‘Compose’
Giardini
Here’s your dose of tutti frutti. Zesty bits from the greengrocers are used as batteries for the musical instruments and lights in Mohri’s intervention in the Japanese pavilion. You can hear the sweet sounds they make as they de-compose, geddit? There are also kinetic sculptures inspired by leaks in the Tokyo subway, which add to the slightly bonkers sense of fun, all accompanied by the sugary-sour whiff of an apple or two that have seen their best days.
Switzerland
Guerreiro do Divino Amor - ‘Super Superior Civilizations’
Giardini
Born in Geneva but living and working in Rio de Janeiro, Divino Amor brings a madcap energy to everything you thought you knew about the land of chocolate, clocks and slightly murky banking. It’s a wildly fun vibe: projections, holograms, video work, sculpture and set design are all whizzed up in an imaginative blender to reshape notions of gender, national and cultural identity. There were decent lines for the planetarium video room but it was well worth it.
Czech Republic
Eva Koťátková - ‘The heart of a giraffe in captivity is twelve kilos lighter’
Giardini
Okay a dissected giraffe doesn’t sound exactly ‘sweet’, but bear with me, this is one of the lovelier pavilions at this year’s Biennale. This show tells the story of ‘Lenka’, who was captured in Kenya in 1954 and transported to Prague Zoo to become the very first Czechoslovak giraffe. But it’s less Natural History Museum, and more soft play centre, with plushly stuffed organs and other bits and bobs arranged around a tunnel that takes you on an auditory journey. The story of Lenka is told through recordings from children, old people and educators, and there’s a joyous sense of play to the space, even/especially when you’re crouched inside a giraffe ‘colon’ filled with plumbing supplies.
Korea
Koo Jeong A - ‘Odorama Cities’
Giardini
Overwhelmed? Okay, this is the final stop. Koo Jeong A has filled the Korean pavilion with a series of olfactory experiences (aka perfumes) which get blown out of a funky alien’s nostrils in the back room like he’s vaping. There are wooden möbius-shaped sculptures and carvings on the floor and the vibe is molto chill. There’s a cafe behind here with a nice view, and some lovely weird Taiwanese Irises in the flowerbeds. Breathe. It’s over, relax. Have a spritz.