Biennale Arte 2022: the pavilions not to be missed

For the first time in the history of the Venice Biennale, the Italian Pavilion presents the work of a single artist: Gian Maria Tosatti. The exhibition project curated by Eugenio Viola, entitled “History of the night and the fate of comets”, aims to represent a “statement on contemporaneity” as well as a real “narrative machine” that can speak and tell about Italy, with a look at present and on the future prospects of humanity. In the preview video The making of made by Xiaomi, sponsor of the Pavilion, Viola commented on his curatorial and artistic choice: “Gian Maria Tosatti is a contemporary mystic. Basically, his research is unique, in my opinion, in the Italian and contemporary art scene. It emerges from a stringent relationship between art and architecture and living, and is profoundly influenced by the original sin of the theater, as can also be seen in this pavilion, whose title, History of the night and the fate of comets, marks a 'work in two acts, the story of the night in fact, and the fate of the comets, introduced by a muted prologue”. A large environmental installation will entirely occupy the spaces of the Tese delle Vergini, configuring itself as an “intermediate device” in which literary references, visual arts, theater, music and performance merge. The path will invite the visitor to reflect on the balance between man and nature, between sustainable development and the territory, between ethics and profit.

The artist Gian Maria Tosatti commented his work in the interview with Xiaomi in this way: “This work tells a moment in our history, a dark moment of our civilization. We are talking for the first time about the extinction of our species. It had never happened, not even in the face of the historical catastrophes that we know very well. So let's talk about a night, the night of our civilization. This is the first part of the job. The second part leads us towards a duty that we artists have, that of always showing a way out. And this way out mainly concerns our falling in love with nature again”. During the Biennale, the Italian Pavilion will represent a real forum – in presence and online – and will host a rich calendar of scientific-informative meetings that will boast the participation of experts from the ecological-environmental and cultural sectors.

Hong Kong is also deservedly represented at the Venice Biennale, with a collateral event not to be missed.  The exhibition outlines a speculative narrative and uses the act of levitation as an organisational metaphor, a common thread among the drawings, moving images, embroideries and installations, in which a fictional alter-ego of the artist explores the cultural and political significance of the act of hovering. The exhibition also features the video work “The Magnificent Levitation Act of Lauren O”, a pseudo-documentary that intertwines reality and fiction and includes found-footage and clips from an unreleased performance by the artist. The audience has access to a hybrid dimension, suspended between fiction and reality, which aims to shed light on the mutability and precariousness of the contemporary world. The exhibition “Angela Su: Arise, Hong Kong in Venice” is promoted by M+, Hong Kong's museum of contemporary visual culture located in the West Kowloon cultural district, and the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC). The exhibition project was curated by Hong Kong-based independent curator Freya Chou together with Ying Kwok, senior curator at Tai Kwun in Hong Kong. 

Magnetic attraction to anyone stepping into the Korean Pavillion, a mechanical snake floats in mid-air at the center of the main room made of the concrete and glass building, erected in 1995. It’s a 50-metre-long spiral, whose shape and curves are generated by an algoritm, a serpentine of 382 continuosly color-changing cells made of transparent laminate polymers. Called Chroma V, it’s the most spectacular art installations of the six displayed here, all by artist/electronic music composer (and poet) Yunchul Kim. In the exhibition curated by Young-chul Lee, Kim stages a cosmogony composed of artworks and poetry, inspired by an interdisciplinary research into science, technology, and philosophy. The result is “Gyre”, “a vortex of fluids, transparent spiral tubes filled with seawater, and huge knots composed of thens of thousands of screws”, divided into three sections, an incredible work of speculative fiction converted into art. 

For the 59. International Art Exhibition in Venice, the Ghana Pavilion, under the patronage of Ghana’s President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, presents the exhibition “Black Star-The Museum as Freedom”. A group exhibition to reflect on the concept of freedom through the notions of time, technology and borders. The title refers to the same black star that represents Ghana through its flag, national football team and its most important monument. The black star also symbolises Africa’s connection to its diasporas through Marcus Garvey’s “Black Star Line” and his “Back-to-Africa” movement now proposed in Ghana as “Beyond the Return”. The exhibition includes large-scale installations by Na Chainkua Reindorf, Afroscope and Diego Araúja. It is designed by architect DK Osseo Asare and curated by Nana Oforiatta Ayim, Director of the ANO Institute of Arts & Knowledge in Accra and Director at Large of Ghana’s Museums and Cultural Heritage.

For the 59. International Art Exhibition Finland presents the video installation “Close Watch”, based on the personal experience of the artist Pilvi Takala, who worked undercover as a qualified security guard for the global company Securitas. In particular, the work focuses on workshops the artist developed in response to ethical problems and dilemmas encountered during a six-month assignment in one of Finland's largest shopping centres. Using the participatory technique of Forum Theatre, the participants (including former colleagues of the artist) experiment with alternative strategies that avoid excessive force, racist language or toxic behaviour. The term “security” is explored as a concept and as an industry, to analyse how it contributes to defining public space and tolerated behaviour, and in its relationship to the idea of “control”. The exhibition is curated by Christina Li, and is commissioned and produced by Frame Contemporary Art Finland. 

Chile participates in the Venice Biennale with the collective project “Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol”, an experimental path to reflect on the climate crisis, with a focus on the conservation and visibility of the peat bogs ecosystem in Patagonia, the most efficient in accumulating carbon in the atmosphere. Curated by Camila Marambio, the very title of the exhibition means “heart of the peat bogs” in the language of the Selk’nam, an indigenous population of Tierra del Fuego, in Patagonia. A multisensory installation brings together a multidisciplinary team formed by visual artist Ariel Bustamante, art historian Carla Macchiavello, filmmaker Doming Sotomayor and architect Alfredo Thiermann. The exhibition aims to represent "an immersion in the material and ancestral experience of the peat bogs", to give visibility to these ecosystems that play a fundamental role in regulating the climate, and to promote a restoration process that combines science, imagination and traditional knowledge. “Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol” is the result of research by the “Ensayos” collective, in close collaboration with the Wildlife Conservation Society of Chile, the Karukinka Park of Tierra del Fuego and the Selk’nam Hach Saye Cultural Foundation. 

The United States is represented by acclaimed American artist Simone Leigh with the exhibition “Simone Leigh: Sovereignty”. On the occasion of the Biennale 2022, Leigh presents a new series of sculptures in ceramic, bronze, and raffia, including a monumental bronze sculpture for the outdoor plaza of the United States Pavilion. The project is conceived in partnership with the Atlanta University Center Art History + Curatorial Studies Collective. Leigh is known for her video, sculptural and performance works that pay homage to and reference African traditions, the African diaspora and black feminist theory. Her sculptures in particular combine forms of vernacular architecture with forms of the female body. Leigh’s exhibition is commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston in collaboration with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The works on view for the U.S. Pavilion will be part of an exhibition at the ICA/Boston in 2023, which will subsequently tour museums throughout the United States.

“The industrial progress of modernism culminated in humanity’s capacity to destroy itself”. It is around this statement that the exhibition project of the Malta Pavilion revolves. Entitled “Diplomazija Astuta”, the Pavilion transforms Caravaggio’s altarpiece “The Beheading of St John the Baptist” into an immersive sculptural installation that superimposes the biblical narrative on the present time. “Diplomazija astuta” presents a kinetic installation by artist Arcangelo Sassolino (ITA), created using induction technology, enriched by an engraving by Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci (MLT) and a “percussive score” by Brian Schembri (MLT) based on “Ut queant laxis”, the Gregorian chant attributed to Guido d’Arezzo in honour of John the Baptist, and rhythmic motifs taken from two hymns by Carlo Diacono composed on the same Latin text and from the “Missa Mundi” by Carlo Camilleri. The theme of the beheading of St John becomes a starting point to explore modernity, cultural customs and instrumentalised geopolitics, and to reveal the critical and unsuccessful points of the humanist project: “deception, media malpractice and the weaponisation of ideas”. The project is presented by the Arts Council Malta with the support of the Ministry of National Heritage, Arts and Local Government and co-curated by Keith Sciberras (MLT) and Jeffrey Uslip (USA). 

Uganda is participating for the first time in the Venice Biennale with the exhibition project “Radiance, They Dream in Time”, realised in partnership between Stjarna.art and the Uganda National Cultural Centre (UNCC) and commissioned by Mme Juliana Naumo. The exhibition is curated by Tanzanian-born British artist Shaheen Merali, and will present the works of two artists originally from Kampala, Acaye Kerunen and Collin Sekajugo. Acaye Kerunen’s artistic and social practice valorises local and regional Ugandan craftsmanship, the “sacred and unexpressed” knowledge of artisans and their role in the ecological management of territories. Through the act of reinstalling deconstructed materials, the artist reflects on the work of African women and their fundamental role in the climate ecosystem. Collin Sekajugo takes inspiration from pop culture and the influence of the mainstream to highlight its influences on the contemporary world and on anthropology. Through a profoundly African lens of observation, Sekajugo uses irreverence, theatricality and play to create a “staging of identity” behind stock images that “colonise” the world. 

Biography and fiction, cinema and dance, existentialism and immigration, emotion and research, Africa and Europe: all this comes together in the rooms of Dreams have no titles by Zineb Sedira. The result, however, is not the usual random megamix, like the bags of grated cheese, but one of the most touching and successful pavilions of this year's Biennale. The starting point are the films co-produced by Italy, France and Algeria in the 1970s, such as Visconti's The Stranger - based on the novel by Camus, not by chance - which act as a flywheel for a macroscopic story, that of the Algerian community and its immigration, and the echo of a biography, that of the artist, which becomes a film.