La Biennale di Venezia has been among us for 127 years already and, in those years, it has brought together some of the most promising, applauded artists and works, serving as a precedent for upcoming art-related events.

In this article, we’ll talk about a selection of pavilions (Austria, USA, Spain, Denmark, Switzerland, Hungary, and Latvia) trying to understand the concepts and the projects' meaning.

PAVILIONS

SPAIN

Corrección (Correction)

Commissioners: Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Unión Europea y Cooperación de España. AECID Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo
Curator: Beatriz Espejo
Exhibitor: Ignasi Aballí

The look on people's faces when they enter the Spanish Pavilion is incredibly entertaining. I reckon it is one of those works you either love or detest. The space brought me a sense of calmness in the middle of a hectic day and made me think about the importance of finding more profound meanings. Studying the building, Ignasi Aballí (Barcelona, 1958) realized the Spanish Pavilion is slightly crooked - about 10 degrees- regarding the adjoining facilities, the Belgium and Holland Pavilions-. Inside the building, we can effortlessly tell which are the “new” and which are the original ones, so it is easy to find the corrections and see what the artist has done with the space and to the space. The curator, Bea Espejo, asks the public about the work: “Supposing that the current location was an anomaly, why correct a building that was previously approved? Why compare it with its neighbors? What changes does this correction imply? This is where the simple concept becomes much more complicated.” In a way, it is the audience who completes the project: wondering about the artist’s intentions, we each have a perception of it, and each one of us can think of a reason why the artist has decided to do this with the space. In this project, we see the reflection of Aballí’s previous work in themes like the tangible and intangible, what we see and don’t in the past and how it affects the future, and error and correction. This Pavilion also has a second part, which is a collection of six guides that the artist has placed in different locations in the city where he suggests a change of the “standard” tourist guide of Venice that we know, directing its correction to the infamous mass tourism that is inevitably damaging the city.

UNITED STATES

Simone Leigh: Sovereignty

Commissioner: Jill Medvedow, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston
Curator: Eva Respini, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston
Exhibitor: Simone Leigh

Simone Leigh (Chicago, 1967) has filled the space of the US Pavilion with large-scale sculptures using ceramics, bronze, raffia, or steel. The artist, also known for working with performance and video, opens a new world: focusing on Black women, African culture, or colonialism; Leigh changes the narrative by presenting a different depiction of History. The original pavilion, of neo-Palladian style, now has a thatched roof that completes the whole exhibition's message. Sovereignty brings us these powerful sculptures of Black females, fusing different parts of History into one -the African diaspora, ritual performances in other parts of Africa, the early Black American culture, or the Paris Colonial Exposition in 1931. This is the first time in the story of the Biennale that a pavilion is awarded in its entirety to a Black female artist -which makes the exhibition have much more sense and relevance-. Visiting the pavilion gives a sense of aristocracy, with the long, bulky dresses, the elongated figures, or the use of neutral colors, with the work Martinique standing out the most because of that powerful shade of blue. “The tendency when people hear Black women’s stories is to focus on what happened to them, not the intellectual labor and creativity they brought to the situation,” Leigh tells The New York Times. “My work is about what they did from those compromised positions — the labor, the care, the love, the ideas.”

AUSTRIA

Invitation of the Soft Machine and Her Angry Body Parts

Commissioner: The Arts and Culture Division of the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport
Curator: Karola Kraus
Exhibitors: Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl

Jakob Lena Knebl (Baden, 1970) and Ashley Hans Scheirl (Salzburg, 1956) are the two artists representing Austria at the Biennale this year. Welcoming us into the symmetrical architecture of the Austrian Pavilion, this is an exhibition that exudes 1970’s vibes. Each of the two parts of the building belongs to one artist. That way we see Knebl’s essence in the gigantic hand that opens the curtain for us to see, and Scheirl’s part is full of hybrid figures with crazy wigs and bright colors. We, as the public, get inside the work and are surrounded by a space that looks like a TV set from the 1970s. Their website reads: “The pavilion is transformed into an inviting, ‘heterotopian’ space where art, performance, design, fashion, and architecture come together in exciting, ironically humorous, futuristic hybrid forms. […] The two artists’ joint installation is characterized by a dynamic juxtaposition and intertwining of different, seemingly paradoxical spaces, styles, and pictogramme-like symbols that all seek to garner the visitors’ attention with their particular devices. The visitors, in turn, become protagonists in this piece, setting the scenery in motion with their bodies.”

Installation photos. © Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl.

HUNGARY

After Dreams: I Dare to Defy the Damage

Commissioner: Julia Fabényi
Curator: Mónika Zsikla
Exhibitor: Zsófia Keresztes

Zsófia Keresztes (Budapest, 1985) explores the complexity of human relations and how they affect when it comes to finding one’s true identity throughout a lifetime. At the same time, the use of mosaics goes back to Antal Szerb’s novel Journey by Moonlight (1937) -the mosaics of Ravenna- and Arthur Schopenhauer’s porcupine dilemma -if we get too close to someone, we risk hurting each other, and if we separate from them we may get consumed by loneliness-. The sculptures in the exhibition, divided into four parts, are joined together by different chains that could symbolize how a person’s identity comes from the past, but also present and future, which, in the end, are the same thing or how we are all part of a community that accompanies us in all stages of our lives and shapes us in some way or another. Zsófia Keresztes is the third woman to have her exhibition at the Biennale di Venezia, and this is the first duo in which the artist and the curator are women. In an interview for Hype&Hyper, Keresztes says: “We dreamed up a path lined with bodies looking for their final form as a string of beads on an endless track of “rails.” The figures are freeze-frames depicting the different stages and possibilities of forming a personality. They work against themselves as well as for each other. They pulsate between destruction and creation, connection and detachment, while constantly interacting with each other.”

Installation photos. © Zsófia Keresztes.

LATVIA

Selling Water by the River

Commissioner: Solvita Krese
Curators: Solvita Krese and Andra Silapētere
Exhibitors: Skuja Braden (Ingūna Skuja and Melissa D. Braden)

The artistic duo Skuja Braden formed by artists Ingūna Skuja (Latvia, 1965) and Melissa D. Braden (USA, 1968), presents us with a pavilion that reminds us of a home. A pretty messy, unstable, hilarious one. They have placed an installation full of porcelain pieces -everyday objects like plates, mugs, vessels, lamps, phones…, fountains, hoses with red lips that look like snakes, figurative sculptures, and many, many eyes- featuring new commissions alongside work from the last 20 years. What looks like a fun exhibition -which it is- has a much deeper meaning. With a plethora of objects, we feel dizzy trying to focus on each piece, every time you look; you find something new you didn’t see at first glance. In the press release of the Latvian Pavilion, they said: “[The artists] have created a multilayered installation that maps the mental, physical, and spiritual areas of being and self within the artists’ own home. In doing so, they hope to offer insight into different readings of the history of the Baltic region and to test the readiness of its current society to live up to the challenges of the present day, including the growing polarization of opinion. What shapes our understanding of public and private space, and what is our role in constructing these views? How can we fashion our surroundings to be as inclusive and open as possible? Where disagreements and conflicts often arise is where private and public spaces meet; a place where different values intersect. For example, the presence of the LGBTQIA+ community is still a sensitive topic in the Baltic and the broader region of Eastern Europe. Although times are changing, even within these regions, that which is different from heteronormativity has often clashed with conservative worldviews linked to a nationalist discourse within the framework of a tradition of a patriarchal society.”

SWITZERLAND

The Concert

Commissioner: Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia (Madeleine Schuppli, Sandi Paucic, Rachele Giudici Legittimo)
Curators: Alexandre Babel, Francesco Stocchi
Exhibitor: Latifa Echakhch

When entering the Swiss Pavilion, you feel like you are stepping into a new world, like you’re on Mars. A bewitching orange light envelops everything and guides you to a dark room, where you don’t see anything at first. Then lights start appearing, flashing and reflecting on the sculptures in the room -large-scale busts and hands- and soon you realize they have a sort of rhythm. There is no sound -except for the noise the public makes when they are walking and unhurriedly moving the pebbles on the floor- but you can hear a kind of visual music coming from the concert of lights. The artist Latifa Echakhch (Morocco, 1974) says: “We want visitors to leave the exhibition with the same feeling they have when they come out of a concert. That this rhythm, those fragments of memory, still echo.” As the press release reads, “The exhibition plays with harmonies and dissonances, with the mixed feelings of expectation, fulfillment and disappearance. The sculptures are part of an orchestrated and enveloping experience, a rhythmic and spatial proposal that allows viewers to experience a fuller perception of time and their own body.” To see what The Concert looks like, please click here.

DENMARK

We Walked the Earth

Commissioner: Danish Arts Foundation
Curator: Jacob Lillemose
Exhibitor: Uffe Isolotto

And last but not least, here is the Danish Pavilion. As we enter the building, we step into what looks like a dystopian future. Hyperrealistic sculptures depicting a centaur family of three are the protagonists of the exhibition. The space looks like a futuristic farmhouse, barn, or stable, full of dark tones and somber corners, giving an immediate sense of distress. The female centaur lies on the floor -after or still giving birth to a creature that is not human but not a centaur like its parents either. Then in the adjacent room, we find the male centaur hanged from the ceiling, having taken his own life. The scene is macabre, raw and shocking, so much so that you can feel the consternation among the audience inside the Pavilion. We don’t quite know if she is dead or not. We also don’t know what has happened, why or how. The exhibition touches on topics we’ve become very familiar with: uncertainty, inner struggles, and references to the ecological crisis in a constantly evolving world. Hope because there is life and despair because there is death. A duality with which we coexist. As read on the website of the Danish Art Foundation: “It’s the basic struggle of navigating a present that is becoming increasingly complex and unpredictable. Who do we become when the world we know no longer exists? Do we seek refuge in who we were, or do we look for escape routes in what we might become?” The artist, Uffe Isolotto, says: “The project is about the state of the world. It’s about the emotions in our time. […] It has been in process for 2,5 years, and we’ve had Covid, and there is war in Ukraine, and there used to be a lot of hope in the exhibition, and it was very light. But it has gradually changed as the world has changed. […] I hope people feel it with their guts first and their heads afterward.” The curator, Jacob Lillemose, says: “We Walked the Earth addresses an experience of being human in a time when human life is becoming more and more integrated into – if not inseparable – from contexts and processes that are both other-than-human and larger-than-human. Does that mean that we need to expand the notion of what it means to be human? That’s the fundamental question the installation asks.”