«Foreigners everywhere»: this is the title of the sixtieth edition Venice Biennale which opens today, curated by Adriano Pedrosaartistic director of the art museum of São Paulo, Brazil, since 2014. The latest by president Roberto Cicutto, inaugurated by his successor Pietrangelo Buttafuoco who speaks of the theme as a “vertigo of the unknown” and of Pedrosa’s work as a «compass that allows us to interpret the paradigm to which we are called, which is not that of an era of change but of a change».
The curator, in fact, conceived his Biennial as «a celebration of the foreign, the distant, the outsider, the queer and the indigenous» and invited 331 artists from 80 different countries to exhibit, favoring those who had never participated at the show.
Foreigners, immigrants, expatriates, diasporic people, exiles or refugees, who move between the South and the North of the world, have given back their experience with paintings, fabrics, craftsmanship handed down by parental ties, traditional iconographies reinterpreted in a critical key. Migration and decolonization are the key themes, in a constant staging of an unresolved sense of guilt on the part of the West towards the rest of the world.
The exhibition also presents a historical nucleus, composed of twentieth-century works from Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Arab world to delve into the modernisms of the global South, with a focus also dedicated to the Italian artistic diaspora, with works by local artists who have traveled and moved abroad, integrating into local cultures.
So “Foreigners everywhere» (title taken from a series of works created by the Claire Fontaine collective since 2004) wherever you are, but also regardless of place because you can be a stranger to yourself and to others. The Italian Pavilion at the Tese delle Vergini in the Arsenale was developed on this more intimate and introspective dimension, which presents the project «Two here/To hear» by the artist Massimo Bartoliniedited by Luca Cerizza, which includes contributions from other artists.
The artist, known for the variety of languages and materials he adopts in his practice, as well as a teacher of visual arts at the Naba in Milan and the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, presents a journey in three acts which develops in two equivalent directions towards a central nucleus. The trees of the garden of the Virgins and the bronze statue in line 2 of a Pensive Bodhisattva, typical of Buddhist iconography, introduce a principle of nature and spirituality.
«The Bodhisattva is a figure that has always fascinated me, because he is an individual who does not act, but reflects», highlights Bartolini. The statue sits thinking about the beginning of a long column resting on the ground, which at the end of its structure reveals its true nature as an organ pipe with a “mouth” that produces a prolonged sound.
In the space of the Garden of the Virgins, the music of a choir for three voices, bells and vibraphone, composed by the English musician, resonates among the branches of the trees Gavin Bryars.
From the gardens and from tesa 2 you reach tesa 1 where the heart of the experience proposed by Bartolini is located: a large sound installation, which can be crossed by the public, the last and most impressive of a series that the artist has created in recent years. years.
The structure, which has the layout of an Italian baroque garden, is made up of scaffolding inside which there are motorized rollers which, like large music boxes, play in unison the composition written by Caterina Barbieri and Kali Malone. The artist modifies the use of materials and makes them sound like an organ, creating a “sonic building”. The music can be heard in stereo only in the center of the structure, where (instead of the typical fountain of the Italian garden) there is a circular sculpture on which you can sit. There the encounter with the other materializes, finding oneself in the position of being able to listen to one another: this is the meaning of overcoming the concept of foreigner.
«It was a project I chose with my heart. Bartolini and his collaborators offer us a physical and metaphysical experience. A powerful invitation to travel within ourselves and our identity which is also an opening towards otherness”, said the Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano.
Unlike past years in which the proposals of Gian Maria Tosatti and the curator Milovan Farronato have greatly divided critics and professionals, this year the project seems to unanimously convince (apart from Vittorio Sgarbi and the mayor Brugnaro, booed yesterday), both for having been able to exploit the potential and typical limits of the pavilion, and for having found an experiential and participatory way to involve the public.
In addition to Italy, they are 87 other nations were present, whose works highlight the differences and disparities dictated by identity, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, freedom and wealth. You are also present at the Vatican with the Holy See pavilion at the women’s prison in Venice on the Giudecca, where the Pope is expected on 28 April. Current events are also the protagonist with the war in the Middle East: after the collection of thousands of signatures from the “Art not genocide alliance” group for the exclusion of Israel from the Biennial, the Israeli pavilion has decided that it will remain closed until it will be a truce. Russia is not participating this year either and is hosting Bolivia’s collective exhibition in its pavilion, while Ukraine offers a reflection on the state of war in which it is living.
The Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement will go to female artists Nil Yalter and Anna Maria Maiolinoon display for the first time at the Biennale, and you have until November 24th to visit the exhibition.
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Tags: Venice Biennale art foreign
