| | | | | | | | | | | | The Venice Biennale
58th International Art Exhibition
11 May – 24 November 2019
May You Live in Interesting Times
www.labiennale.org
The 58th International Art Exhibition, titled May You Live In Interesting Times, will take place from 11 May to 24 November 2019 (Pre-opening on 8, 9, 10 May). The title is a phrase of English invention that has long been mistakenly cited as an ancient Chinese curse that invokes periods of uncertainty, crisis and turmoil; "interesting times", exactly as the ones we live in today.
The awards ceremony and the inauguration will take place on Saturday May 11th. |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The 58th Exhibition is curated by Ralph Rugoff, currently the director of the Hayward Gallery in London. Between 1985 and 2002 he wrote art and cultural criticism for numerous periodicals, publishing widely in art magazines as well as newspapers, and published a collection of essays, Circus Americanus (1995). During the same period he began working as an independent curator.
Ralph Rugoff has declared: "May You Live in Interesting Times will no doubt include artworks that reflect upon precarious aspects of existence today, including different threats to key traditions, institutions and relationships of the "post-war order." But let us acknowledge at the outset that art does not exercise its forces in the domain of politics. Art cannot stem the rise of nationalist movements and authoritarian governments in different parts of the world, for instance, nor can it alleviate the tragic fate of displaced peoples across the globe (whose numbers now represent almost one percent of the world's entire population)."
The Exhibition will develop from the Central Pavilion (Giardini) to the Arsenale,
and will include 79 artists from all over the world.
Selected artists using photography or video art: |
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| | | | | | | | Zanele Muholi
Bona, Charlottesville, Virginia, 2015
Silver Gelatin Print 80 x 50.5cm
© Zanele Muholi Courtesy of Stevenson,
Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yancey Richardson, New York | | | | | | Alex Da Corte
Rubber Pencil Devil - 2018
Video, color/sound; 2:39:52 min.
Courtesy of the artist, Karma, NY and Gio Marconi, Milan – La Biennale di Venezia | | | | | | Mari Katayama
Cannot Turn the Clock Back #005, 2017
C-Print 150 x 100 cm
Courtesy of Mari Katayama, rin art association
© Mari Katayama | | | | | | Walled Unwalled (2019), Lawrence Abu Hamdan.
Photo: Mathilda Olmi © Centre d'Art contemporain, Genève;
courtesy the artist, Biennale de l'Image en Mouvement and Maureen Paley, London | | | | | | Korakrit Arunanondchai in collaboration with Alex Gvojic
No history in a room filled with people with funny names 5 2018
Video with boychild: 3 channel video, 30:44 min.
© Korakrit Arunanondchai and Alex Gvojic
Courtesy: Carlos/Ishikawa, London, C L E A R I N G, New York/Brussels, Bangkok CityCity Gallery, Bangkok | | | | | | Apichatpong Weerasethakul et Tsuyoshi Hisakado, "Synchronicity", 2018.
Single-channel video, sound, light bulbs, projector shutter, microphone, aluminium.
Dimensions variables, 14 minutes 12 secondes en loop.
Installation view at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
© Apichatpong Weerasethakul + Tsuyoshi Hisakado Courtesy of SCAI THE BATHHOUSE and OTA FINE ARTS. Biennale de Venezia |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | John Akomfrah, Mimesis: Seven Ambiguities of Colonial Disenchantment (2018). © Smoking Dogs Films. Courtesy of Lisson Gallery. | | | | | | | | | | | | | Opening: Wed 8 May 11:00 | | | | | | | | | | | | | Titled 'Ghana Freedom', after the song composed by E.T. Mensah on the eve of the birth of the new nation in 1957, the pavilion curated by Nana Oforiatta Ayim examines the legacies and trajectories of that freedom by six artists, across three generations, rooted both in Ghana and its Diasporas: through archives of objects in large-scale installations by El Anatsui and Ibrahim Mahama; representation and portraiture, both in the studio work of Ghana's first known female photographer Felicia Abban and imagined by painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye; and the relativities of loss and restitution in a 3-channel film by John Akomfrah and in a film sculpture by Selasi Awusi Sosu. The elliptically-shaped design of the pavilion by Sir David Adjaye explores the intersection of ideas linking the works.
The Ghana Pavilion will be accompanied by a publication with a preface by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo; foreword by the Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Honorable Catherine Afeku; and contributions by Sir David Adjaye, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Nana Oforiatta Ayim, Okwui Enwezor, Taiye Selasi, Hakeem Adam, Adjoa Armah, Mae-ling Lokko, Kuukuwa Manful, Larry Ossei-Mensah, and Mavis Tetteh-Ocloo.
There will be a series of critical platforms and interventions in Ghana throughout the Biennale 'Ghana Freedom' will travel from Venice to Accra after the Biennale. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | Renate Bertlmann
Hinter jeder Sehnsucht steht der Tod, 1982
Schwarz-Weiß-Fotografie, diverse Maße
© Renate Bertlmann |
| | | | | | | | Opening: Thu 9 May | | | "I am happy about my wonderful task to design the Austrian Pavilion in Venice. Radical contents and aesthetics and a willingness to take risks are the main pillars of my artistic work. My visions, which have carried me for fifty years, will therefore also find an authentic expression in this place."
Renate Bertlmann
www.bertlmann.com
Renate Bertlmann (*1943 in Vienna) studied at the Academy of Arts in Oxford in 1962/63 and subsequently at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna until 1970. After graduating in Painting and Restoration, she was a lecturer at the Department of Conservation and Technology at the Academy until 1982. She lives and works in Vienna.
In her work Bertlmann explores representations of roles and bodies, questioning gender relationships by discussing subjects like pornography, sexuality, violence, Eros, and hierarchy. Her works are particularly characterized by a provocative, ironic approach. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | Alban Muja, Family Album (1999).
Photo by Skender Muja at the Hamallaj refugee camp, Albania.
© Muja Family.
Courtesy of the artist. |
| | | | | | | | | | | | Thu 9 May 14:00 | | | Muja's work, which takes the form of video installation, short films and documentaries, drawing, painting and performance, is largely influenced by the ongoing processes of social, political and economic transformation in his native Kosovo and across the wider region of the Balkans. Through his practice, he investigates history and socio-political themes, and links them to his position in Kosovo today.
For the Kosovo Pavilion, Muja will present a new video installation that digs deep into personal and collective memories of the Kosovo War (1998-1999) and interrogates the role that images and the media have in constructing and shaping narrative, identity and history, especially in times of conflict. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | Igor Grubic
"Traces of Disappearing (Deconstruction of the Factory)", 2006-2019
Photo essay (detail)
Courtesy of the artist | | | Igor Grubic »
Traces of Disappearing in Three Acts (2006-2019) | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Igor Grubić's project for the Biennale, Traces of Disappearing in Three Acts (2006-2019), is thirteen years in the making. It consists of three inter-related photo essays and an animated film, set in a specially designed mise-en-scène. The project began in 2006 when the artist began documenting post-war, transitional reality in Croatia, particularly the fundamental shift from socialism to capitalism, from a central, stated-planned to a free market economy. It explores how this has affected changes in habitation, the urban fabric, public space and social relations.
Wild House, the first chapter or 'Act', examines changes in homes, living and public space with the privatisation of property and the consolidation of neo-liberalism in the country; Filigree Sidewalk (Act II), looks into traditional vocations such as local handcrafts and specialist workshops, highlighting which professions survive and which not in the new economic circumstances. Finally, Deconstruction of the Factory (Act III) presents a series of defunct factories, monumental reminders of the transition from industry to post-industry, and changing conditions of work. The latter also become the setting for Grubić's short film, How Steel was Tempered, which weaves together issues of worker history, family bonds and generational shifts, suggesting also the importance of fruitful future relationships based on solidarity, shared social space and creative, collaborative working. The film has already received four awards. A newly edited version will be presented in Venice for the first time.
Grubić's project sits firmly in the humanist dimension of documentary photography, bridging together poetics, politics and social reality. The project for the Biennale expands his already significant contribution into socially committed documentary work, and the preservation of the memory of Croatia's architectural history, work and culture. Its scope is local but also ecumenical, analysing as it does the changes engendered by globalization, privatisation and the consolidation of neo-liberalism. Finally, it highlights the new situations that are coming to replace the old, while subtly inviting us to think about future ways of imagining – and inhabiting - our world. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | Mauro Pinto
Onde as pessoas não importam, 2017
from the series Black Money
Inkjet print on fine art paper
120 × 80 cm |
| | | | | | | | | | | | + Gonçalo Mabunda | | | The National Pavilion of Mozambique aims to show, through a contemporary perspective, the troubled past of the nation and its influences in today's society. portraying this journey are three artists who grew up in a post-colonial period during which the country was engulfed in a long civil war from 1977 to 1992. Heirs of a common historical and cultural background, Gonçalo Mabunda, Mauro Pinto and Filipe Branquinho, are producers of diversified discourses that converge in the way they critically interrogate vectors of power which adversely affect the lives of millions of Mozambicans today. They bring to this exhibition a space for reflection that goes beyond aesthetic-pleasure, provoking a dialogical conversation on violence, corruption and social injustice. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | Laure Prouvost: film still, video Deep See Blue Surrounding You / Vois Ce Bleu Profond Te Fondre 2019
Set photography, C-print. © Laure Prouvost, Courtesy of the artist,
Galerie Nathalie Obadia (Paris – Brussels), carlier | gebauer (Berlin) & Lisson Gallery (London – New York) | | | Laure Prouvost »
Deep See Blue Surrounding You / Vois Ce Bleu Profond Te Fondre | | | | Opening: 8 - 10 May | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The cornerstone of Deep See Blue Surrounding You / Vois Ce Bleu Profond Te Fondre is a fictional film. It takes the form of an initiatory journey filmed over the course of a road trip on horseback through France—from the Parisian suburbs to the northern region, from the Palais Idéal du Facteur Cheval to the Mediterranean Sea—and, finally, to Venice. A sculptural installation, taking as a metaphorical point the trajectory of the octopus goes beyond the film, transcending out of the realms of the Pavilion and beyond. It uses typical processes of the artist's practice such as leftover objects from the film, resin, clay, glass, plants or water vapor, and features performances interacting with the architecture and the objects. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | Film Still: One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk (2019) |
| | | | | | | | Isuma, meaning "to think, or a state of thoughtfulness" in Inuktitut, is Canada's first Inuit video-based production company. It was co-founded in 1990 by Kunuk, Cohn, Paul Apak Angilirq (1954-1998), and Pauloosie Qulitalik (1939-2012) to preserve Inuit culture and language and to present Inuit stories to Inuit and non-Inuit audiences around the world. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | Arsenale Sale d'Armi Nord | TURKEY | |
| | | | | | | | | Eskizler, Sketches; We, Elsewhere by İnci Eviner |
| | | | | | | | | | | | We, Elsewhere is an investigation into the spaces that we create, and are created for us as a result of collective displacement. The exhibition ruminates on how subjects who find themselves in these spaces react and interact with one another and with their memories. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | Angelica Mesiti, ASSEMBLY, 2019 (production still) three-channel video installation in architectural amphitheater. HD video projections, color, six-channel mono sound, 25 mins, dimensions variable. © Photography: Bonnie Elliott. | | | | | | | | Opening: Wed 8 May | | | | | | | | | | | | | ASSEMBLY opens with the 'Michela' machine, a 19th century stenographic machine, modelled on a piano keyboard, which is used in the Italian Senate for official parliamentary reporting to ensure transparency within the democratic process. The machine's inventor, Antonio Michela Zucco, was originally inspired by musical notation as a universal language.
Mesiti uses this device to code "To Be Written in Another Tongue," a poem by David Malouf, which is then arranged into a musical score by composer Max Lyandvert, and played by an ensemble of musicians whilst performers, representing the multitude of ancestries that make up cosmopolitan Australia, gather, disassemble and re-unite.
In ASSEMBLY, a communal gathering is a means for making those with authority recognize the collective power of 'the people'.
"Through both the metaphor of translation and the act itself, I am exploring the very human and increasingly urgent need we have to assemble in a physical way, in a physical space, in these complex times," Angelica Mesiti said.
"In ASSEMBLY, Angelica translates text to code, music to movement and actions to occupations to represent the way a society gathers and builds upon itself," said curator Juliana Engberg. "The exuberant energy she unleashes in ASSEMBLY, demonstrates the creativity and strength of community in evolution."
Adrian Collette AM, Chief Executive Officer of the Australia Council, added, "The Australia Council is proud to present Angelica Mesiti's deftly nuanced, deeply moving new work, ASSEMBLY, at the Biennale Arte 2019. The work uses metaphor, performance and a multitude of divers… | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | Tracey Rose
Span I, 1997
Digital print in pigment inks on 100% cotton rag paper
65 x 91cm
Edition of 6
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND GOODMAN GALLERY |
| | | | | | | | | | | | + Mawande Ka Zenzile | | | The three artists that have been selected to represent South Africa explore the themes of social, political and economic resilience under the title "The Stronger We Become", the aim of which is capturing the collective fortitude of South Africans and is in response to the 2019 curatorial theme, May You Live In Interesting Time, set by Ralph Rugoff. Rugoff suggests that "uncertainty, crisis and turmoil" makes it necessary to focus on "art's social function as embracing both pleasure and critical thinking. The intention of this exhibition is not only to recognise the brilliance of this trio of artists but also to open up debates about the narratives of social resilience that are reflected in their creative practice. The objective is to curate the pavilion to symbolize freedom of expression, the freedom to create challenging work and the freedom to present dissenting voices that displace geographical space and speak for self-determination. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | Fondaco Marcello San Marco 3415 | IRAN | |
| | | | | | | | No.14 Hanger 1, Perspex, iron and digital print on mesh, 140x66x10 cm,(2016)
© Samira Alikhanzadeh |
| | | | | | | | | | | | Of Being and Singing is commissioned by Hadi Mozaffari of the Visual Arts Affair Office and organized by Mehdi Afzali, the CEO of Institute of Contemporary Arts Developments. The program will showcase works by Reza Lavassani, Samira Alikhanzadeh and Ali Meer Azimi.
Samira Alikhanzadeh (1967) is scheduled to showcase a collection of digital prints created based on a series of old family photos. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | Ist. Santa Maria d. Pietà, Castello 3701 | ANDORRA | |
| | | | | | | | Goddess of oxygen – esbós © Philippe Shangti | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Philippe Shangti: A self-taught photographer and sculptor, Philippe Shangti hails from Toulouse and now lives in Andorra. His visually provocative and very striking work is intended to denounce different problems affecting society today.
This provocative proposal in the form of a fragmented installation seeks to criticise the effects of exacerbated consumerism and to rouse the collective consciousness. Despite the bright saturated colours and clean perfect finishes of Shangti's works, they are envisaged as a protest and an incitement to thought.
Philippe Shangti boldly portrays superficiality, building stories that have been meticulously conceived. Comprising photography, sculpture and kitsch, audiovisual, Shangti's project is set within the framework of the metalanguage of art and brings us closer to the contemporary aesthetic of pop art style..
In short, this is an invitation to reconsider the consumerist present that is leading us ever nearer to a future, a precarious future, that is already too close…
The Andorran Pavilion presents a provocative proposal of speculative fiction in which Philippe Shangti rouses the collective consciousness with his vision of the world. It is a fragmented installation of bits and snatches which should be examined separately in order to understand this multidisciplinary project: a criticism of exacerbated consumerism and its effects.In the purest Camp style, it sets before us universal topics using bright surfaces, saturated colours and clean perfect finishes, seeking all the while to protest and to provoke.Shangti's passion for photography arose at a very early age, when he was given his first camera, which he came to use extensively.
Later, his bold character and life itself led him to Saint-Tropez, where he came upon a world that took drugs and concealed itself in superficiality. He dared to portray it, showing women marked by a confusion of vulnerability and strength, as may be seen in the mo… | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | Fondamenta Del Soccorso (Dorsoduro) 2596 | ARMENIA | |
| | | | | | | | | Artlab Yerevan, Revolutionary Sensorium |
| | | | | | | | | | | | "Revolutionary Sensorium", according to the collective's concept, aimed to reconstruct the revolutionary events in the imagination of the viewers, present the emotions that create revolution and that the revolution created, map the places where the revolutionary bodies drew their political outline. Artlabyerevan political art group was created after the split of the "Art laboratory" group to continue activist art practice, support activist groups. "Artlabyerevan" aims to combine political and art research, explore and discover the hidden mechanisms that contribute to the formation of authoritarian, exploitative and corrupt systems. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | From "Tsunami Stone", Motoyuki Shitamichi (2015-) |
| | | | | | | | | | | | + Taro Yasuno (composer) + Toshiaki Ishikura (anthropologist) + Fuminori Nousaku (architect) | | | | | A long time ago, sun and moon descended to earth and laid a single egg. A snake came and swallowed the egg, and so sun and moon visited earth once more to leave behind three eggs that they hid: one inside earth, one inside stone, and one inside bamboo. The eggs soon hatched, and born were the ancestors of three islands. .. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca, Swinguerra, 2019. Film still. | | | | | | | | | | | | | Opening: Wed 8 May | | | | | | | | | | | | | For the official representation of Brazil at the 58th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Wagner & de Burca are presenting an installation around a new film commissioned for the occasion. The show is curated by Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro and produced by the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Citizenship.
Between May and December 2019, the two rooms of the Brazilian Pavilion in Venice will be transformed into a large installation created around the film debuting at the event, Swinguerra. The most recent project of the artist duo Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca (Brasília, 1980 / Munich, 1975) was begun upon receiving an invitation from Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, appointed as curator by the Fundação Bienal, to hold a solo show as the official representation of Brazil at the world's oldest art biennial. The show will consist of a two-channel video installation featuring the film commissioned for the occasion and, in the smaller room, a site-specific installation with portraits of the participants of the new work. The pavilion will thus reflect, in two different mediums, the same artwork.
Although its production began in late 2018, Swinguerra has been in gestation since 2015, when, during the research for their first audiovisual work, Faz que vai [Set to Go] (2015), the duo made contact with the dance trend known as swingueira. In this cultural phenomenon from Recife, dance groups consisting of from 10 to 50 people train rigorously to perform in annual competitions. "Swingueira is a sort of updating of a set of traditions such as square dancing, the samba school and the trio elétrico [mobile sound systems], practiced autonomously and independently by youths who get together regularly in sports courts on the outskirts of Recife," explains Bárbara Wagner. "Born from the need for social integration, this phenomenon includes the experience of identity and has arrived at the stage and on Instagram as a sort of spectacle fed by the mainstream, but which survives absolutely outside of it," she adds... | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | No Body, 2017, HD video with animation, 11:45 min. |
| | | | | | | | | | | | Field Hospital X (FHX) is a mobile, international institution, established by artist Aya Ben Ron. It is an organization that is committed to researching the way art can react and act in the face of social ills. Learning from the structure and practice of hospitals, health maintenance organizations and healing resorts, FHX provides a space in which silenced voices can be heard and social injustices can be seen. It launches at the Israeli Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and from there it will continue to travel to various sites around the world, to develop and expand.
In this protected environment, the artist projects "No Body", a video work which tells of her personal experience of abuses with the aim to shed a light also on other silent voices and stories of suffered mistreatments. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | Palazzo Mora, Strada Nova, 3659 | KIRIBATI | |
| | | | | | | | Daniela Danica Tepes, Kiribati Return, Interactive Installation, 2019 © Daniela Danica Tepes, Courtesy the Artist | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In the great vastness of the Pacific Ocean, the tiny island countries are barely noticeable on the map. One of these islands is the Republic of Kiribati, consisting of 33 paradise atolls with wonderful beaches. However, the rising ocean level caused by climate change is threatening the existence of Kiribati. The islands are in danger of disappearing into the Pacific Ocean forever.
The Republic of Kiribati Pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia reflects the endangered existence of the island country of Kiribati and the time we live in. According to Plato, in contrast to the impermanent nature of our world and objects within our world, forms and ideas are permanent. In the Kiribati Pavilion, you can see interlaced group artworks by 29 artists from different generation and genres of art. The presented art genres are: video, photography, interactive animation, performance, ready-made and installation. The artistic elements used in the artworks include sound, colour, light, space and material.
The artist Kaeka Michael Betero uses photography and videos to represent the threat to homes and inhabitants. His authentic and genuine approach shows reality as it is. The Kairaken Betio Group uses dance to communicate their passion for life, dance and tradition. The elements of their performance are rooted in tradition in connection to modern performance approaches.
Daniela Danica Tepes, a visual artist, connects all the artworks into an interactive installation in the form of a room in a Kiribati house, where the threat of inundation is ever present as the waves have already covered more than half of the window height. The room is filled with traditional items used by Kiribati inhabitants. The interactive installation turns on when visitors enter the room. As they move around the exhibition space, they awaken animated otherworldly dancers who mimic the visitors' movements. This art project discusses the issue of climate change and is designed as a reflection between the artwork, human presence and space.
Kairaken Betio Performance Group: Teroloang Borouea, Neneia Takoikoi, Tineta Timirau, Teeti Aaloa, Kenneth Ioane, Kaumai Kaoma, Runita Rabwaa, Obeta Taia,Tiribo Kobaua, Tamuera Tebebe, Rairauea Rue, Teuea Kabunare, Tokintekai Ekentetake, Katanuti Francis, Mikaere Tebwebwe, Terita Itinikarawa, Kaeua Kobaua, Raatu Tiuteke, Kaeriti Baanga, Ioanna Francis, Temarewe Banaan, Aanamaria Toom, Einako Temewi, Nimei Itinikarawa, Teniteiti Mikaere, Aanibo Bwatanita, Arin Tikiraua. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Wed 8 May 14:00 | | | MONDO CANE presents itself as a local folkloric museum that displays the human figure. ... Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys have the habit of distilling fictions out of a reality that is, sometimes, 'too real.' Both willingly concede that they feel attracted to the psychotic state of contemporary societies, a state that they simultaneously dread and disseminate in their work. MONDO CANE, which seizes visitors with its off-kilter realism, is in every way a continuation of this practice.
: The website conceived and designed by the artists for their eponymous exhibition is, like the publication, an additional space for unfolding and exploring the ideas of MONDO CANE. Mondocane.net is an artistic space that allows visitors to navigate randomly through hundreds of videos selected by the artists. The panorama offers hours of watching cultural practices taking place over the world. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | Ananian Léki Dago, Abidjan, Ivory Coast, 2014 | | | | | | | | | | | Opening reception: Wed 8 May 18:00 | | | | | | | | | | | | | At the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Ivory Coast is represented by four artists: Ernest Dükü, Ananias Léki Dago, Valérie Oka, Tong Yanrunan who, with their works merge in a common line, an intimate vision of the world, giving a precious and an important contribution to the contemporary art.
The exhibition titled The Open Shadows of Memory, presents works that speak of the mother earth as a collection of the memories of humanity.
Ananias Léki Dago, photographer, works in the old-fashioned way. He walks his camera along African roads and offers us black and white renderings. His work tells the story of the oversights and controversial aspirations of the new generations of Africans.
Valérie Oka, who started with furniture design, uses drawing and photography to tell, with great enthusiasm, about the forgotten heroes of her land and the erased beauties of Africa. She sometimes highlights her images with hand-drawn highlights that strongly recall the gestures of the ancestors reading their future on the sand. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | Pauline Boudry - Renate Lorenz, Moving Backwards, 2019 (detail). Installation with film, curtain, stage, bar, publication and performances |
| | | | | | | | | | | | Thu 9 May 14:30 | | | Entitled "Moving Backwards", the exhibition reflects on the current political situation, characterised by its regressive and reactionary forces of closure towards the other and towards difference. Faced with the scale of this recent backlash, the artists, instead of practicing an outright opposition, suggest "backward movements" as a potential tool for producing alternative forms of resistance and action. For the Biennale Arte 2019, the artists will develop a large film installation. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | Tamás Waliczky: Beam Splitter Camera, 2017/2018. Computer graphic print on lightbox 100 x100 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Ani Molnár Gallery, Budapest |
| | | | | | | | | | | | Thu 9 May 11:30 | | | Tamás Waliczky's proposed project for the Hungarian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale revolves around the wide array of possibilities of visual perception and the ways in which they can be captured and depicted. The title refers first and foremost to the 23 imaginary cameras Waliczky began designing in 2016. The optical devices Waliczky has envisioned, images of which were created using digital software, operate with analogue mechanisms and draw attention to the cultural and technical determinedness of visual perception and depiction. His choice of subject matter is particularly timely, as we have become enmeshed in the intricate web of cameras to an extent that we have not yet entirely grasped. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello Cannaregio 4118 | GRENADA | |
| | | | | | | Billy Gerard Frank – Film Still from 2nd Eulogy: mind the gap
© Billy Gerard Frank | | | | | | | | | | | | | Opening: Wed 8 May 16:00 | | | | | | | | | | | | | The 'Epic Memory' theme of the Grenada pavilion refers to the words of Poet Derek Walcott, in his acceptance speech for the Nobel prize in literature: "Antillean art is this restoration of our shattered histories, our shards of vocabulary, our archipelago becoming a synonym for pieces broken off from the original continent." The Caribbean has been a site of synthesis, adaptation, rejection, affirmation and innovation, through the constant flux of cultures and people encountering one another. The recorded history, always at risk of being destroyed by the movements of earth, fire, wind, and water, leads to the memory stored in the DNA, passed from generation to generation.
The artists selected for the Venice Biennale were challenged to look at their own memories and how they define themselves in a Caribbean Context, even though some of them were not born nor grew up in Grenada. Their art works in the pavilion will include videography, installation, photography, painting and some works that combine all of these disciplines. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | Nujoom Alghanem. Passage (production still), 2019. Courtesy National Pavilion UAE – La Biennale di Venezia. Photo credit Augustine Paredes of Seeing Things |
| | | | | | | | | | | | Wed 8 May 12:30 | | | Presenting 'Passage', a new site-specific, two-channel video installation by poet, filmmaker and artist Nujoom Alghanem. Curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, the immersive installation expands Nujoom Alghanem's experimentation with contemporary Arabic poetry through the language of film. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | Larissa Sansour/Søren Lind, In Vitro, 2019, film, 2 channels, production still. Courtesy of the artist. Photographer: Lenka Rayn H | | | | | | | | Opening: Thu 9 May 13:00 | | | | | | | | | | | | | At the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, the Danish-Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour will present Heirloom, an otherworldly rumination on memory, history and identity. Curated by Nat Muller, the exhibition will comprise of a two-channel science-fiction film, a sculptural installation and an architectural intervention, inviting the viewer into a dark universe.
"The film, entitled 'In Vitro', is staged in the town of Bethlehem decades after an eco-disaster. The dying founder of a subterranean orchard is engaged in a dialogue with her young successor, who is born underground and has never seen the town she's destined to replant and repopulate. Inherited trauma, exile and collective memory are central themes.
The younger woman struggles with her memories of the past, dismissing them as nothing but reductive patterns, tropes and iconography. This is a topic of great interest to me. In my recent work, the negotiation of identity markers and signifiers is a key focus. While these aim to erect the pillars of a shared understanding, they also tend to rid the notions they emphasise of any significance, eventually rendering them meaningless.
"The sculptural installation takes a psychological object from the film and recreates it as a large-scale monument. It further explores the protagonist's trauma and converts it to a physically imposing fact."
Larissa Sansour | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | Jane Jin Kaisen, Community of Parting (still), 2019. Film. © Jane Jin Kaisen. |
| | | | siren eun young jung | | | | | | | Thu 9 May 13:30 | | | Who canonized the formation of history and whose bodies are yet to be written about as part of that story? What changes would emerge, if we revisited the solid strata demarking East Asia and its myths, and what would we discover if we approached these sites of modernization and nationalistic history through the lens of gender diversity? It is these vital questions that frame the exhibition History Has Failed Us, but No Matter organized for the Korean Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, showcasing the work of three women artists: siren eun young jung, Jane Jin Kaisen, and Hwayeon Nam. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | Song-Ming Ang, Recorder Rewrite, 2019. Film still courtesy of the artist. |
| | | | | | | | Thu 9 May | | | Song-Ming Ang's presentation, Music for Everyone: Variations on a Theme, explores the myriad of ways people relate to music, on a personal and societal level, and how music can affect a sense of agency. Commissioned by the National Arts Council Singapore, the multidisciplinary presentation comprises film, digital prints, sculptures and banners. Ang's works examine the social aspects of sound and music, bridging various creative fields including the visual arts, experimental music and popular culture. His practice also traverses a variety of media, from video and performance to installation and participatory art. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | Danica Dakić, Zenica Trilogy, 2019, still photograph.
Photographer: Danica Dakić © VG Bild-Kunst Bonn. Courtesy of the artist | | | | | | | | Opening: Thu 9 May 18:00 | | | | | | | | | | | | | Danica Dakić will present a major solo exhibition of new work in the Pavilion of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the 58th Venice Biennale running from May 11, 2019 until November 24, 2019. The artist was invited by a curatorial team consisting of Anja Bogojević, Amila Puzić, and Claudia Zini appointed by the commissioning institution Ars Aevi Museum of Contemporary Art Sarajevo.
The Bosnian participation at the Venice Biennale is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Sports of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose expert commission appointed Ars Aevi Museum of Contemporary Art Sarajevo to manage the Pavilion of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Venice. The project is also supported by the Ministry of Civil Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the City of Sarajevo, Sarajevo Center for Contemporary Arts / pro.ba and the Foundation for Cinematography Sarajevo.
The artist will present her new film installation Zenica Trilogy, which was realised with protagonists from the cities of Zenica and Sarajevo. The project is the result of collaboration with photographer Egbert Trogemann, producer Amra Bakšić Čamo, and composer Bojan Vuletić.
"In her approach to the Bosnia and Herzegovina Pavilion project, Danica Dakić investigates the heritage of modernity, from Bauhaus to the utopian paradigms of international and Yugoslav socialist modernism. It exemplifies her search to reactivate utopian potentials by establishing a poetic relationship to the Bosnian post-war reality. Taking a cue from Walter Gropius' Total Theatre (1926/27) and extending it to a space for social activation, the dividing lines between stage and audience, the real and the imagined city, are dis… | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | Driant Zeneli, Maybe the cosmos is not so extraordinary, 2019. Two-channel video installation. © the artist and Prometeogallery di Ida Pisani, Milan/Lucca. |
| | | | | | | | | | | | Fri 10 May 14:30 | | | How do we push our physical and mental boundaries without becoming superheroes? Can the possible and the imaginary coexist? At the core of Driant Zeneli's research is the redefinition of failure, utopia and dream. Through filmic narration and performance, Driant Zeneli questions human obsession with its own limits, sketching alternative responses to the fragility of human beings and planet earth. He challenges the physical and metaphysical relationship between man and space, matter and dream, gravity and control. Maybe the cosmos is not so extraordinary (2019), is a sculptural video installation which expands upon a multidisciplinary project ... | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | Khadar Ahmed, "The Night Thief", Courtesy the artist |
| | | | | | | | | | | | Fri 10 May 14:00 | | | The MWC is formed and informed by a transdisciplinary and transnational community of artists, filmmakers, writers, intellectuals, performers, and activists. Exploring the miracle as a poetic vehicle from which to expand perceptions and experiences, the exhibition is realised through cinematic collaborations by members of the collective, and a site-specific sculptural installation by Outi Pieski gesturing to the transnationality of the Sámi people across Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Creating a space of encounters upon which to pause and reflect, the pavilion challenges the notion of national representation and belonging.
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Still from CASANOVA X, 4K video, 10'00'', from the film series for the installation 3x3x6 © Shu Lea Cheang. Courtesy of the artist and Taiwan in Venice 2019 | | | | | | | | Opening: Wed 8 May 10:00 | | | | | | | | | | | | | Taipei Fine Arts Museum will present 3x3x6 as Taiwan's representation at the Venice Biennale 2019. The exhibition features artist Shu Lea Cheang's brand-new commissioned project 3x3x6, curated by Paul B. Preciado. The exhibition at the Palazzo delle Prigioni will be on view from May 11–November 24, 2019; opening hours are from Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m., and also on May 13, September 2, and November 18, 2019. Guided tours will be available twice a day during opening hours from May 11– August 27, 2019.
Soon after the World Wide Web was made available for public access in 1990, artist Shu Lea Cheang, armed with her creativity and imagination, embarked on a journey to expand new media beyond known functions of digital communication. She connected virtual networks with spaces in the real world and initiated creative, performative, and action-based projects.
Her piece BRANDON (1998–99) became the first work of "net art" (a movement also known as "net.art," led by artists who work in the medium of the Internet) to be commissioned and collected by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Internationally recognized as an Internet art pioneer, Cheang explores the changing relationships between technology and body politics in the age of late capitalism and globalization. Her films, installations, interactive interfaces, and live performances reflect on the power of images and fictions to subvert normative representations of gender, sexuality, and race.
For Taiwan's collateral presentation Cheang will create a new work inspired by the history of the exhibition venue, Palazzo delle Prigioni, which first served as a prison in the sixteenth century. The work's title refer… | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | La bambina con il pallone, 1980
© Letizia Battaglia | | | | | | | | until 18 August 2019 | | | | | | | | | | | | | From 20 March to 18 August 2019, the Casa dei Tre Oci in Venice will be hosting a large-scale anthological show of the work by Letizia Battaglia (Palermo 1935), one of the most significant protagonists of Italian photography, and it will range over her whole career.
The show, curated by Francesca Alfano Miglietti, organised by Civita Tre Venezie, promoted by the Fondazione di Venezia, and with the participation of Tendercapital, presents 300 photographs, many of which have never been exhibited before, and which reveal the social and political context in which they were shot. The selection of photos, undertaken together with the Letizia Battaglia archive, from the first had the help of Marta Sollima and, for the search for further choices, of Maria Chiara De Trapani.
The exhibition itinerary will focus on those arguments that have been at the heart of the most characteristic expressive aspects of Letizia Battaglia and that have led her to make a deep and continuous social criticism while avoiding clichés and questioning the visual premises of contemporary culture. The portraits of women, men, animals, and children are only some of the chapters that make up the show; added to these are photos of cities such as Palermo, and then those devoted to politics, life, death, love, as well as two films that inquire into her human and artistic activities.
The result is a genuine portrait of Letizia Battaglia, a nonconformist intellectual but also a poetic and political photographer, a woman who interests herself in what surrounds her and in what, distant from her, arouses her interest. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | © Joan Jonas, Moving Off the Land II, 2019, video still, Courtesy of the artist |
| | | | | | | | | | | | Performance Tue 7 May 21:00 + 23:00
24 Mar – 29 Sep 2019 | | | Joan Jonas's mesmerizing performance Moving Off the Land pays tribute to the ocean and its creatures, biodiversity, and delicate ecology. The performance takes place on the occasion of Jonas's exhibition "Moving Off the Land II", the inaugural project at Ocean Space, curated by Stefanie Hessler. On this exceptional occasion, Jonas is joined onstage by the celebrated composer, improviser, and electronic musician Ikue Mori and the performer Francesco Migliaccio. Combining movement, live drawing, readings, and video projection, Moving Off the Land draws on literary and mythological sources as well as multiple layers of gestures and brings together numerous aquatic beings, both real and imaginary. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | via Giovanni Pascoli 11 - Mestre | Museo M9 | |
| | | | | | | | Nino Migliori , Il Tuffatore, 1951 © Fondazione Nino Migliori | | | | | | | L'Italia dei fotografi. 24 storie d'autore | | | | | | | | until 16 June 2019 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The Italy of Photographers. 24 Artists' Tales is the first temporary exhibition specially developed for the new M9 Museum, a structural masterpiece designed by Sauerbruch Hutton that has transformed the heart of Mestre. The exhibition is curated by Denis Curti and features more than 230 photographs by 24 great Italian photographers. They narrate the 20th century in Italy in an ideal continuation of the multimedia story told in the permanent exhibition on the 20th century and all its changes on the first two floors of M9. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Hiroyuki Masuyama
J.M.W. TURNER Looking along the Riva degli Schiavoni, from near the Rio dell'Arsenale, 1840
2010
Ed. 2/7
led lightbox
24,6 x 30,4 x 4 cm |
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8 May – 28 Jul 2019 | | | | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | Lynn Davis, "ICEBERG XXXVII e XXXVIII, DISKO BAY, GREENLAND", 2016
© Lynn Davis, Courtesy Studio la Città - Verona |
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8 May – 28 Jul 2019 | | | | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | from Me and Fashion © Brigitte Niedermair |
| | | | | | | | | | | | 9 May – 24 Nov 2019 | | | Brigitte Niedermair's solo exhibition at the Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo is a dynamic interplay of the artist's photographs – drawn from her archive of over twenty years of photographic practice – with the architecture and décor of the interconnected rooms of Palazzo Mocenigo. | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | LHB, 2017
Still from single-channel HD video. 20 minutes duration. Commissioned by Berwick Visual Arts. |
| | | | | | | | Thu 9 May 14:00 | | | Scotland + Venice is delighted to present a new single-channel video installation by Charlotte Prodger, curated by Linsey Young with Cove Park, at the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.Located at Arsenale Docks, Prodger's new work will build upon her sustained exploration of subjectivity, self-determination, and queerness.
Simultaneous to the exhibition in Venice, Prodger's new work will also tour cinemas across Scotland's west coast, highlands and islands from Thursday 27 June 2019.
Charlotte Prodger (b.1974) studied at Goldsmiths University of London and Glasgow School of Art. Prodger won the Margaret Tait Award (2014), was shortlisted for the Jarman Award (2017) and recently received the Turner Prize (2018) for her solo exhibition BRIDGIT/Stoneymollan Trail (Bergen Kunsthall, 2018). | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | © 7 May 2019 photo-index UG (haftungsbeschränkt)
Ziegelstr. 29 . D–10117 Berlin
Editor: Claudia Stein & Michael Steinke
contact@photo-index.art . T +49.30.24 34 27 80 | | |
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