Contemporary Art and Politics in Venice

VENICE – RESPONSE. The carabinieri guarding his closed booth Israel and opposite a rally protesting the bombing of Gaza. Her booth Poland which changed representation at the last minute after the recent elections giving space and voice to Ukrainian artists. Ultra-luxurious yachts for the mothers of modern art, eccentric presentations by artists and curators from the world’s greatest museums, parties by famous designers and art lovers, and at the same time an army of auxiliary staff who clean and sweep up what we visitors leave behind us every day.

This year’s Biennale that opens to the public today looks like a shining constellation of different economic, geopolitical and cultural dimensions struggling to fit into a single framework. The exhibition includes 86 national entries, while four African countries are participating for the first time (Benin, Ethiopia, Timor and Tanzania). National representations at best have their roots in local cultural particularities, however contemporary art not only does not hide, but on the contrary highlights its relationship with global politics, which is simultaneously a space of resistance and cultural diplomacy.

The spirit is given by the title of this year’s Biennale, “Strangers Everywhere”captured in a large-scale installation at the Gaggiandre shipyards in the Arsenale of the curator of the event Adriano Pedrosa. The setting of the play is a world filled with various crises in countries, nations, territories and borders, reflecting the dangers of language, translation, nationality, expressing differences based on identity, race, gender, sexuality, the wealth. “Wherever you go, wherever you are you will always meet strangers – they/we are everywhere. No matter where you are, you are always deep inside, a foreigner”, notes Pedrosante, giving the stamp of the event.

In the pavilions, however, we see a homogeneity in the representations, which probably has to do with the common anxieties of contemporary art regarding its next important step. Where are we going, the artists seem to ask, and if we are all “Foreigners Everywhere”, I wonder what the point of national stands is. If we now leave aside the conceptual framework and enter the territory of a visual institution that confers prestige on the competing artists, we single out certain national pavilions that are already being discussed and long queues are forming outside their entrances.

National delegations are rooted in local particularities, yet politics is omnipresent.

The German pavilion balances in the transition between the disappearing past and an uncertain future. The present is but an intermediate state, a place of transit for all kinds of immigrants. In the Egyptian pavilion, the Egyptian artist Wael Soki uses film, sculpture, performance and design to examine and reverse established notions of ethnic and religious identity embedded in the cultural heritage of the Arab world.

In the aesthetic and expressive minimalism of an exceptional artist of African descent, Kipuana Kiwanga who has transformed the Canadian pavilion into a single sculptural installation, the Japanese woman Yuko Mori in Japan’s proposal she juxtaposes her own version of abstraction by talking about decay and changes in nature through everyday objects.

The chromophobia of modern art is attacked by American national participation. THE Jeffrey Gibson, a member of the Choctaw Band of Mississippi Indians and of Cherokee descent, who grew up in large urban centers in the US, Germany and Korea expresses himself with a visual language that draws from American, Native and queer histories, and references to popular subcultures, literature and world artistic traditions. On the other hand, at the British booth, writer and artist Sir John Acomfra focusing on hearing rather than sight, he explores the role of water in understanding our world and preserving memory by talking about racial injustice, diasporic immigrant experiences and climate change.

The awarding of awards of the competition section will take place this evening. Until then, all visitors to the Biennale will continue to walk with mobile phones in hand, reading – paradoxically – what they are experiencing at the same time.