Venice Biennale: Three Favorite Pavilions in the Giardini

Founded in 1895, at first the Biennale occupied what is now the Central Pavilion. Individual national pavilions date from 1907 (Belgium) to 1995 (Korea) and the development of the layout of the Biennale spans the twentieth century. Since each country chooses the artist or artists who represent it, and each country has its own system for making the choice, the pavilions, each a unique building designed by an architect, host diverse exhibitions, 29 in all. For more information on the Biennale history click here.

Most of the exhibitions are one-person shows, but a few include artist groups or multiple artists. This year the Netherlands gave its pavilion to an artists' collective of Congolese plantation workers from a plantation formerly owned by Unilever. They sell their art for funds to buy back their ancestral lands. The Israeli pavilion remained closed for the duration of the war in Gaza and the Russian pavilion was given to a group of artists from Bolivia. We did not visit that pavilion and I think we missed Switzerland.

Amid all the densely installed installations, videos, and complex concepts, the Canada pavilion was a relief, a simple, clean installation of geometric forms and subtly changing colors, both minimal sculptures and colored walls. Before we visited it, we had a snack in a new outdoor cafe next door, and I noticed that the exterior walls were covered in a dark blue textured substance. Upon closer examination we found that the walls were all covered with strings of Venetian seed beads, the artist using media from the host country to create the exhibition. I watched a visitor finger one of the strings, confirming that they were beads. 

The introductory label, and the booklet that we were given, address the use of glass beads as trade items throughout the world. For us their use by Native American artists was particularly meaningful, but African and Asian cultures used them as well. The artist of this installation, titled Trinket, is Kapwani Kiwanga, a Canadian who lives and works in Paris and whose work, according to Wikipedia, deals with issues of colonialism, gender, and the African diaspora. The booklet includes an essay about the history of trade beads and their use in exchange for ivory, gold, furs and slaves, casting a dark light on perhaps the most beautiful installation of the Biennale, and certainly the best one I have seen from Canada in the forty years I have been attending.

Even the outside walls were covered with strings of beads, in this case all blue beads, a color that was especially valued in many cultures to which the beads were traded.
 

The second pavilion that impressed us was Austria, across a bridge in a kind of secondary section of pavilions. The building was designed by Josef Hoffman in 1934.

The artist is Anna Jermolaewa, who was born in Leningrad, USSR, and has lived in Vienna since 1989, having come to Austria as a refugee. Among the items in her installation was a 2006 video titled "Research for Sleeping Positions," depicting her trying to sleep on a bench in the Westbahnhof in Vienna, the train station where she arrived seventeen years before and where she slept for her first week in Austria. Since then the station has added armrests to prevent people from sleeping there.

A second object is six pay phone booths from the refugee camp in Traiskirchen, Austria. The label says that the most international calls made in Austria came from these phone booths. They are the ones the artist used to contact her family when she arrived in Austria. The phone booths work.

Finally, another video shows four dancers rehearsing to perform Swan Lake, a project in collaboration with the Ukrainian dancer and choreographer Oksana Serheieva. Apparently at times of political unrest, especially at the death of the head of state, Soviet television replaced their regular broadcast with a loop of Swan Lake, sometimes for days. Tchaikovsky's ballet became a code for a change in power. So rather than a tool of censorship it had been traditionally, the artists transform Swan Lake into a hopeful rehearsal for regime change in Russia.

We've seen a lot of displays addressing issues of migration, oppression, colonialism, and injustice and often they generalize, use multiple adjectives, and seem to be charging the viewer with evil. By connecting the objects with her specific biography, describing the events clearly, and not expressing an opinion, Jermolaewa made it possible to empathize with her as a refugee and a migrant.

Our third favorite pavilion also involved video, a surprise since in general we do not embrace video installations. This was Egypt, and the artist is Wael Shawky. The video is titled Drama 1882 and stages the Urabi revolution of 1879 to 1882, a relatively unknown event in which a cafe fight results in riots that inspired the British forces to bomb Alexandria in the Battle of Tel El Kebir. In response to the riots, the British ordered the Egyptians to disarm and when they didn't the British bombarded Alexandria and drove the Egyptian troops from the city.  As a result, the British occupied Egypt until 1956. 

We did not photograph the video, but it is available online. The video in six sections is a sort of operatic rendering of the conflict, composed and staged by Shawky in a mesmerizing, stylized performance. With the subject of the Biennale being "Foreigners Everywhere," it was unusual for the foreigners to be British, rather than migrants from non-European continents. Through the staging, Shawky calls attention to this important and under-recognized event, and to an aspect of the history of colonialism. 

Venice Biennale, Cuban Pavilion

 We spent a week in Venice in July, just to see the Biennale.  This year, even with all the previous articles in art publications and newspapers, it was more difficult than usual to locate the sites, on account of inadequate maps. We were able to plan by using three different maps, each listing different exhibitions and attractions at varied locations. The Giardini and Arsenale are easy, as are the major museums, but the off-site national pavilions and other exhibitions occupy spaces around the city in sundry offices, shops, palaces, and apartments. Of course, in a week it's impossible to see everything, or even most of what's on view. I estimate that we went to about 75 national pavilions, collateral events, and other exhibitions, from a total of 244, according to one map. In addition, it was a particularly hot July, not life-threatening, but certainly tiring. 

My plan is to write about various aspects of the city-wide event. Of course, other writers have discussed virtually every exhibition, often listing "the best," and those they consider of greatest interest. 

 I begin with the Cuban Pavilion a simple installation by the artist Wilfredo Prieto, titled "Curtain." It was located on the Fondamenta Nuove, the side of Venice that faces Murano and the San Michele cemetery island, a relatively quiet quay. A young intern welcomed us and we walked into the very dark room and saw this spotlighted rock. We looked at it for a minute and walked out.

 

The young woman said, "Did you see one rock or two?" and we realized that we needed to go back into the pavilion and let our eyes adjust to the dark. After a few minutes, we saw this:

You can just barely make out the second rock diagonally back to the left of the spotlighted one. We spent a few minutes looking at the two rocks and thinking about how important it is not to assume you know everything just from what you first see, how taking some time can offer different perspectives and more information. How things you might need to know can be hidden if you don't give them time. It seemed much more profound than just two rocks.

When we left, we picked up the information sheet offered by the pavilion. In addition to information about Wilfredo Prieto's history, other exhibitions, and poetic practice, it included this paragraph about the work:

"The installation highlights, with a poetic gesture, the weight of identity, the significance of identity and the complexities surrounding integration and belonging. It challenges the notion of luck and its implications within the context of evolution and natural selection, represented by the changes, diversity, social, racial, ethnic, political and economic differences. In his exploration of reality, Prieto proposes an analysis that revolves around the interplay of opposites, and varying levels of sensitivity: the tangible physical realm and the realm of representation, which serves as a metaphorical reflection of ourselves. It is an introspection of human thought, for despite the many ways in which individuals think, feel and behave, we are part of the same thing."

I struggle to see how that paragraph connects to the two rocks, one in the spotlight and one in the dark, that we saw, and wonder if other viewers could make a connection. Is it because one rock is included and the other is left out? If someone can explain it to me, please do.