The Milk of Dreams: 59th Venice Biennale
We take a look at some of the major themes and works presented in the 59th Venice Biennale
April 28, 2022
The New York Times briefing this week had a headline that read: “A New Geopolitical Landscape”. This was shorthand script to explain the increasing global maturity of countries previously seen as ‘undeveloped’ by Western standards (evidently ignoring the fact most of these countries had only in recent memory gained their own national independence), and thus had been previously reliant on Western powers to buoy them in the murky waters of the world’s markets. These same countries are now reaching a point of economic, political, and ideological maturity, and so are able to stand apart from Western patronage and act on their own terms.
This new geopolitical landscape is being unwittingly mirrored at the 2022 Venice Biennale, greeting us through the city’s opened palazzo doors. The 5exhibition, curated by Cecilia Alemani, is a visual representation of such shifting geopolitical plates with artists from all corners of the world representing countries and their respective pavilions. This includes 5 new country participations: Cameroon, Namibia, Nepal, Oman, and Uganda. The Biennale’s theme, The Milk of Dreams, is a title taken from Leonora Carrington’s own Surrealist literature that Alemani describes in her press release as life “reinvented through the prism of imagination and one is allowed to transform and become other to oneself”.
It’s been fascinating to see this platform being offered, through Alemani’s bold curatorship, to a strong, audacious, and highly imaginative body of primarily women and nonbinary artists to curb and decentre the historical and present influence of Western, masculine-dominated thought. Once again, turning away from Western dependency and very much aware of their own validity and identity.
Artists throughout the Biennale represent their respective countries, yet as Frieze’s Jennifer Higgie astutely points out: “National pavilions are only bricks and mortar […] At best, they complicate the idea of what it means to come from somewhere.” Artists, much like the current global landscape, are imagining what life is like when they’re able to express themselves as they want to without the cacophonous shackles of the ‘shoulds’ often parroted by those interested in keeping a supremacist status quo. Brazil’s Jonathas de Andrade’s exhibition Com o Coração Saindo Pela Boca (With the Heart Coming Out of the Mouth) is such an example of this, using language and visual idioms as a means to surreptitiously subvert Jair Bolsanaro’s controversial governance of his country.
At the Chilean pavilion, we see Cecilia Vicuña’s NAUfraga, an extension of her Precarious project that began in 1966. Vicuña, one of the elder artists on show at the Biennale, has, for as long as she has been creating work, always challenged and openly, vocally criticised Chilean and international governments on the subject of indigenous rights and the exploitation of the country’s natural habitats and resources in favour of profit and gain.
Two other artists, who are incidentally long-standing friends as we speak about in our previous article here, that have successfully found the balance between celebration and resistance have been Zineb Sedira and Sonia Boyce representing France and Britain’s pavilions respectively. Sedira being the first person of Algerian descent to represent France, and Boyce is the first Black woman representing Britain. Both women refuse to stand alone as representatives of their own identity, instead choosing to share their platform with those of similar backgrounds and histories, creating a collective network both uplifting one another as well as holding powers that be accountable and daring to shine a light on history long-ago buried.
The Biennale this year is imaginative as it is grounded, hopeful as it is pragmatic, and no less wonderful because of it. Long may these artists’ voices remain and be uplifted.
The 59Venice Biennale is now open until November 2022.
The New York Times briefing this week had a headline that read: “A New Geopolitical Landscape”. This was shorthand script to explain the increasing global maturity of countries previously seen as ‘undeveloped’ by Western standards (evidently ignoring the fact most of these countries had only in recent memory gained their own national independence), and thus had been previously reliant on Western powers to buoy them in the murky waters of the world’s markets. These same countries are now reaching a point of economic, political, and ideological maturity, and so are able to stand apart from Western patronage and act on their own terms.
This new geopolitical landscape is being unwittingly mirrored at the 2022 Venice Biennale, greeting us through the city’s opened palazzo doors. The 5exhibition, curated by Cecilia Alemani, is a visual representation of such shifting geopolitical plates with artists from all corners of the world representing countries and their respective pavilions. This includes 5 new country participations: Cameroon, Namibia, Nepal, Oman, and Uganda. The Biennale’s theme, The Milk of Dreams, is a title taken from Leonora Carrington’s own Surrealist literature that Alemani describes in her press release as life “reinvented through the prism of imagination and one is allowed to transform and become other to oneself”.
It’s been fascinating to see this platform being offered, through Alemani’s bold curatorship, to a strong, audacious, and highly imaginative body of primarily women and nonbinary artists to curb and decentre the historical and present influence of Western, masculine-dominated thought. Once again, turning away from Western dependency and very much aware of their own validity and identity.
Artists throughout the Biennale represent their respective countries, yet as Frieze’s Jennifer Higgie astutely points out: “National pavilions are only bricks and mortar […] At best, they complicate the idea of what it means to come from somewhere.” Artists, much like the current global landscape, are imagining what life is like when they’re able to express themselves as they want to without the cacophonous shackles of the ‘shoulds’ often parroted by those interested in keeping a supremacist status quo. Brazil’s Jonathas de Andrade’s exhibition Com o Coração Saindo Pela Boca (With the Heart Coming Out of the Mouth) is such an example of this, using language and visual idioms as a means to surreptitiously subvert Jair Bolsanaro’s controversial governance of his country.
At the Chilean pavilion, we see Cecilia Vicuña’s NAUfraga, an extension of her Precarious project that began in 1966. Vicuña, one of the elder artists on show at the Biennale, has, for as long as she has been creating work, always challenged and openly, vocally criticised Chilean and international governments on the subject of indigenous rights and the exploitation of the country’s natural habitats and resources in favour of profit and gain.
Two other artists, who are incidentally long-standing friends as we speak about in our previous article here, that have successfully found the balance between celebration and resistance have been Zineb Sedira and Sonia Boyce representing France and Britain’s pavilions respectively. Sedira being the first person of Algerian descent to represent France, and Boyce is the first Black woman representing Britain. Both women refuse to stand alone as representatives of their own identity, instead choosing to share their platform with those of similar backgrounds and histories, creating a collective network both uplifting one another as well as holding powers that be accountable and daring to shine a light on history long-ago buried.
The Biennale this year is imaginative as it is grounded, hopeful as it is pragmatic, and no less wonderful because of it. Long may these artists’ voices remain and be uplifted.
The 59Venice Biennale is now open until November 2022.
The New York Times briefing this week had a headline that read: “A New Geopolitical Landscape”. This was shorthand script to explain the increasing global maturity of countries previously seen as ‘undeveloped’ by Western standards (evidently ignoring the fact most of these countries had only in recent memory gained their own national independence), and thus had been previously reliant on Western powers to buoy them in the murky waters of the world’s markets. These same countries are now reaching a point of economic, political, and ideological maturity, and so are able to stand apart from Western patronage and act on their own terms.
This new geopolitical landscape is being unwittingly mirrored at the 2022 Venice Biennale, greeting us through the city’s opened palazzo doors. The 5exhibition, curated by Cecilia Alemani, is a visual representation of such shifting geopolitical plates with artists from all corners of the world representing countries and their respective pavilions. This includes 5 new country participations: Cameroon, Namibia, Nepal, Oman, and Uganda. The Biennale’s theme, The Milk of Dreams, is a title taken from Leonora Carrington’s own Surrealist literature that Alemani describes in her press release as life “reinvented through the prism of imagination and one is allowed to transform and become other to oneself”.
It’s been fascinating to see this platform being offered, through Alemani’s bold curatorship, to a strong, audacious, and highly imaginative body of primarily women and nonbinary artists to curb and decentre the historical and present influence of Western, masculine-dominated thought. Once again, turning away from Western dependency and very much aware of their own validity and identity.
Artists throughout the Biennale represent their respective countries, yet as Frieze’s Jennifer Higgie astutely points out: “National pavilions are only bricks and mortar […] At best, they complicate the idea of what it means to come from somewhere.” Artists, much like the current global landscape, are imagining what life is like when they’re able to express themselves as they want to without the cacophonous shackles of the ‘shoulds’ often parroted by those interested in keeping a supremacist status quo. Brazil’s Jonathas de Andrade’s exhibition Com o Coração Saindo Pela Boca (With the Heart Coming Out of the Mouth) is such an example of this, using language and visual idioms as a means to surreptitiously subvert Jair Bolsanaro’s controversial governance of his country.
At the Chilean pavilion, we see Cecilia Vicuña’s NAUfraga, an extension of her Precarious project that began in 1966. Vicuña, one of the elder artists on show at the Biennale, has, for as long as she has been creating work, always challenged and openly, vocally criticised Chilean and international governments on the subject of indigenous rights and the exploitation of the country’s natural habitats and resources in favour of profit and gain.
Two other artists, who are incidentally long-standing friends as we speak about in our previous article here, that have successfully found the balance between celebration and resistance have been Zineb Sedira and Sonia Boyce representing France and Britain’s pavilions respectively. Sedira being the first person of Algerian descent to represent France, and Boyce is the first Black woman representing Britain. Both women refuse to stand alone as representatives of their own identity, instead choosing to share their platform with those of similar backgrounds and histories, creating a collective network both uplifting one another as well as holding powers that be accountable and daring to shine a light on history long-ago buried.
The Biennale this year is imaginative as it is grounded, hopeful as it is pragmatic, and no less wonderful because of it. Long may these artists’ voices remain and be uplifted.
The 59Venice Biennale is now open until November 2022.
The New York Times briefing this week had a headline that read: “A New Geopolitical Landscape”. This was shorthand script to explain the increasing global maturity of countries previously seen as ‘undeveloped’ by Western standards (evidently ignoring the fact most of these countries had only in recent memory gained their own national independence), and thus had been previously reliant on Western powers to buoy them in the murky waters of the world’s markets. These same countries are now reaching a point of economic, political, and ideological maturity, and so are able to stand apart from Western patronage and act on their own terms.
This new geopolitical landscape is being unwittingly mirrored at the 2022 Venice Biennale, greeting us through the city’s opened palazzo doors. The 5exhibition, curated by Cecilia Alemani, is a visual representation of such shifting geopolitical plates with artists from all corners of the world representing countries and their respective pavilions. This includes 5 new country participations: Cameroon, Namibia, Nepal, Oman, and Uganda. The Biennale’s theme, The Milk of Dreams, is a title taken from Leonora Carrington’s own Surrealist literature that Alemani describes in her press release as life “reinvented through the prism of imagination and one is allowed to transform and become other to oneself”.
It’s been fascinating to see this platform being offered, through Alemani’s bold curatorship, to a strong, audacious, and highly imaginative body of primarily women and nonbinary artists to curb and decentre the historical and present influence of Western, masculine-dominated thought. Once again, turning away from Western dependency and very much aware of their own validity and identity.
Artists throughout the Biennale represent their respective countries, yet as Frieze’s Jennifer Higgie astutely points out: “National pavilions are only bricks and mortar […] At best, they complicate the idea of what it means to come from somewhere.” Artists, much like the current global landscape, are imagining what life is like when they’re able to express themselves as they want to without the cacophonous shackles of the ‘shoulds’ often parroted by those interested in keeping a supremacist status quo. Brazil’s Jonathas de Andrade’s exhibition Com o Coração Saindo Pela Boca (With the Heart Coming Out of the Mouth) is such an example of this, using language and visual idioms as a means to surreptitiously subvert Jair Bolsanaro’s controversial governance of his country.
At the Chilean pavilion, we see Cecilia Vicuña’s NAUfraga, an extension of her Precarious project that began in 1966. Vicuña, one of the elder artists on show at the Biennale, has, for as long as she has been creating work, always challenged and openly, vocally criticised Chilean and international governments on the subject of indigenous rights and the exploitation of the country’s natural habitats and resources in favour of profit and gain.
Two other artists, who are incidentally long-standing friends as we speak about in our previous article here, that have successfully found the balance between celebration and resistance have been Zineb Sedira and Sonia Boyce representing France and Britain’s pavilions respectively. Sedira being the first person of Algerian descent to represent France, and Boyce is the first Black woman representing Britain. Both women refuse to stand alone as representatives of their own identity, instead choosing to share their platform with those of similar backgrounds and histories, creating a collective network both uplifting one another as well as holding powers that be accountable and daring to shine a light on history long-ago buried.
The Biennale this year is imaginative as it is grounded, hopeful as it is pragmatic, and no less wonderful because of it. Long may these artists’ voices remain and be uplifted.
The 59Venice Biennale is now open until November 2022.
The New York Times briefing this week had a headline that read: “A New Geopolitical Landscape”. This was shorthand script to explain the increasing global maturity of countries previously seen as ‘undeveloped’ by Western standards (evidently ignoring the fact most of these countries had only in recent memory gained their own national independence), and thus had been previously reliant on Western powers to buoy them in the murky waters of the world’s markets. These same countries are now reaching a point of economic, political, and ideological maturity, and so are able to stand apart from Western patronage and act on their own terms.
This new geopolitical landscape is being unwittingly mirrored at the 2022 Venice Biennale, greeting us through the city’s opened palazzo doors. The 5exhibition, curated by Cecilia Alemani, is a visual representation of such shifting geopolitical plates with artists from all corners of the world representing countries and their respective pavilions. This includes 5 new country participations: Cameroon, Namibia, Nepal, Oman, and Uganda. The Biennale’s theme, The Milk of Dreams, is a title taken from Leonora Carrington’s own Surrealist literature that Alemani describes in her press release as life “reinvented through the prism of imagination and one is allowed to transform and become other to oneself”.
It’s been fascinating to see this platform being offered, through Alemani’s bold curatorship, to a strong, audacious, and highly imaginative body of primarily women and nonbinary artists to curb and decentre the historical and present influence of Western, masculine-dominated thought. Once again, turning away from Western dependency and very much aware of their own validity and identity.
Artists throughout the Biennale represent their respective countries, yet as Frieze’s Jennifer Higgie astutely points out: “National pavilions are only bricks and mortar […] At best, they complicate the idea of what it means to come from somewhere.” Artists, much like the current global landscape, are imagining what life is like when they’re able to express themselves as they want to without the cacophonous shackles of the ‘shoulds’ often parroted by those interested in keeping a supremacist status quo. Brazil’s Jonathas de Andrade’s exhibition Com o Coração Saindo Pela Boca (With the Heart Coming Out of the Mouth) is such an example of this, using language and visual idioms as a means to surreptitiously subvert Jair Bolsanaro’s controversial governance of his country.
At the Chilean pavilion, we see Cecilia Vicuña’s NAUfraga, an extension of her Precarious project that began in 1966. Vicuña, one of the elder artists on show at the Biennale, has, for as long as she has been creating work, always challenged and openly, vocally criticised Chilean and international governments on the subject of indigenous rights and the exploitation of the country’s natural habitats and resources in favour of profit and gain.
Two other artists, who are incidentally long-standing friends as we speak about in our previous article here, that have successfully found the balance between celebration and resistance have been Zineb Sedira and Sonia Boyce representing France and Britain’s pavilions respectively. Sedira being the first person of Algerian descent to represent France, and Boyce is the first Black woman representing Britain. Both women refuse to stand alone as representatives of their own identity, instead choosing to share their platform with those of similar backgrounds and histories, creating a collective network both uplifting one another as well as holding powers that be accountable and daring to shine a light on history long-ago buried.
The Biennale this year is imaginative as it is grounded, hopeful as it is pragmatic, and no less wonderful because of it. Long may these artists’ voices remain and be uplifted.
The 59Venice Biennale is now open until November 2022.
The New York Times briefing this week had a headline that read: “A New Geopolitical Landscape”. This was shorthand script to explain the increasing global maturity of countries previously seen as ‘undeveloped’ by Western standards (evidently ignoring the fact most of these countries had only in recent memory gained their own national independence), and thus had been previously reliant on Western powers to buoy them in the murky waters of the world’s markets. These same countries are now reaching a point of economic, political, and ideological maturity, and so are able to stand apart from Western patronage and act on their own terms.
This new geopolitical landscape is being unwittingly mirrored at the 2022 Venice Biennale, greeting us through the city’s opened palazzo doors. The 5exhibition, curated by Cecilia Alemani, is a visual representation of such shifting geopolitical plates with artists from all corners of the world representing countries and their respective pavilions. This includes 5 new country participations: Cameroon, Namibia, Nepal, Oman, and Uganda. The Biennale’s theme, The Milk of Dreams, is a title taken from Leonora Carrington’s own Surrealist literature that Alemani describes in her press release as life “reinvented through the prism of imagination and one is allowed to transform and become other to oneself”.
It’s been fascinating to see this platform being offered, through Alemani’s bold curatorship, to a strong, audacious, and highly imaginative body of primarily women and nonbinary artists to curb and decentre the historical and present influence of Western, masculine-dominated thought. Once again, turning away from Western dependency and very much aware of their own validity and identity.
Artists throughout the Biennale represent their respective countries, yet as Frieze’s Jennifer Higgie astutely points out: “National pavilions are only bricks and mortar […] At best, they complicate the idea of what it means to come from somewhere.” Artists, much like the current global landscape, are imagining what life is like when they’re able to express themselves as they want to without the cacophonous shackles of the ‘shoulds’ often parroted by those interested in keeping a supremacist status quo. Brazil’s Jonathas de Andrade’s exhibition Com o Coração Saindo Pela Boca (With the Heart Coming Out of the Mouth) is such an example of this, using language and visual idioms as a means to surreptitiously subvert Jair Bolsanaro’s controversial governance of his country.
At the Chilean pavilion, we see Cecilia Vicuña’s NAUfraga, an extension of her Precarious project that began in 1966. Vicuña, one of the elder artists on show at the Biennale, has, for as long as she has been creating work, always challenged and openly, vocally criticised Chilean and international governments on the subject of indigenous rights and the exploitation of the country’s natural habitats and resources in favour of profit and gain.
Two other artists, who are incidentally long-standing friends as we speak about in our previous article here, that have successfully found the balance between celebration and resistance have been Zineb Sedira and Sonia Boyce representing France and Britain’s pavilions respectively. Sedira being the first person of Algerian descent to represent France, and Boyce is the first Black woman representing Britain. Both women refuse to stand alone as representatives of their own identity, instead choosing to share their platform with those of similar backgrounds and histories, creating a collective network both uplifting one another as well as holding powers that be accountable and daring to shine a light on history long-ago buried.
The Biennale this year is imaginative as it is grounded, hopeful as it is pragmatic, and no less wonderful because of it. Long may these artists’ voices remain and be uplifted.
The 59Venice Biennale is now open until November 2022.
The New York Times briefing this week had a headline that read: “A New Geopolitical Landscape”. This was shorthand script to explain the increasing global maturity of countries previously seen as ‘undeveloped’ by Western standards (evidently ignoring the fact most of these countries had only in recent memory gained their own national independence), and thus had been previously reliant on Western powers to buoy them in the murky waters of the world’s markets. These same countries are now reaching a point of economic, political, and ideological maturity, and so are able to stand apart from Western patronage and act on their own terms.
This new geopolitical landscape is being unwittingly mirrored at the 2022 Venice Biennale, greeting us through the city’s opened palazzo doors. The 5exhibition, curated by Cecilia Alemani, is a visual representation of such shifting geopolitical plates with artists from all corners of the world representing countries and their respective pavilions. This includes 5 new country participations: Cameroon, Namibia, Nepal, Oman, and Uganda. The Biennale’s theme, The Milk of Dreams, is a title taken from Leonora Carrington’s own Surrealist literature that Alemani describes in her press release as life “reinvented through the prism of imagination and one is allowed to transform and become other to oneself”.
It’s been fascinating to see this platform being offered, through Alemani’s bold curatorship, to a strong, audacious, and highly imaginative body of primarily women and nonbinary artists to curb and decentre the historical and present influence of Western, masculine-dominated thought. Once again, turning away from Western dependency and very much aware of their own validity and identity.
Artists throughout the Biennale represent their respective countries, yet as Frieze’s Jennifer Higgie astutely points out: “National pavilions are only bricks and mortar […] At best, they complicate the idea of what it means to come from somewhere.” Artists, much like the current global landscape, are imagining what life is like when they’re able to express themselves as they want to without the cacophonous shackles of the ‘shoulds’ often parroted by those interested in keeping a supremacist status quo. Brazil’s Jonathas de Andrade’s exhibition Com o Coração Saindo Pela Boca (With the Heart Coming Out of the Mouth) is such an example of this, using language and visual idioms as a means to surreptitiously subvert Jair Bolsanaro’s controversial governance of his country.
At the Chilean pavilion, we see Cecilia Vicuña’s NAUfraga, an extension of her Precarious project that began in 1966. Vicuña, one of the elder artists on show at the Biennale, has, for as long as she has been creating work, always challenged and openly, vocally criticised Chilean and international governments on the subject of indigenous rights and the exploitation of the country’s natural habitats and resources in favour of profit and gain.
Two other artists, who are incidentally long-standing friends as we speak about in our previous article here, that have successfully found the balance between celebration and resistance have been Zineb Sedira and Sonia Boyce representing France and Britain’s pavilions respectively. Sedira being the first person of Algerian descent to represent France, and Boyce is the first Black woman representing Britain. Both women refuse to stand alone as representatives of their own identity, instead choosing to share their platform with those of similar backgrounds and histories, creating a collective network both uplifting one another as well as holding powers that be accountable and daring to shine a light on history long-ago buried.
The Biennale this year is imaginative as it is grounded, hopeful as it is pragmatic, and no less wonderful because of it. Long may these artists’ voices remain and be uplifted.
The 59Venice Biennale is now open until November 2022.
The New York Times briefing this week had a headline that read: “A New Geopolitical Landscape”. This was shorthand script to explain the increasing global maturity of countries previously seen as ‘undeveloped’ by Western standards (evidently ignoring the fact most of these countries had only in recent memory gained their own national independence), and thus had been previously reliant on Western powers to buoy them in the murky waters of the world’s markets. These same countries are now reaching a point of economic, political, and ideological maturity, and so are able to stand apart from Western patronage and act on their own terms.
This new geopolitical landscape is being unwittingly mirrored at the 2022 Venice Biennale, greeting us through the city’s opened palazzo doors. The 5exhibition, curated by Cecilia Alemani, is a visual representation of such shifting geopolitical plates with artists from all corners of the world representing countries and their respective pavilions. This includes 5 new country participations: Cameroon, Namibia, Nepal, Oman, and Uganda. The Biennale’s theme, The Milk of Dreams, is a title taken from Leonora Carrington’s own Surrealist literature that Alemani describes in her press release as life “reinvented through the prism of imagination and one is allowed to transform and become other to oneself”.
It’s been fascinating to see this platform being offered, through Alemani’s bold curatorship, to a strong, audacious, and highly imaginative body of primarily women and nonbinary artists to curb and decentre the historical and present influence of Western, masculine-dominated thought. Once again, turning away from Western dependency and very much aware of their own validity and identity.
Artists throughout the Biennale represent their respective countries, yet as Frieze’s Jennifer Higgie astutely points out: “National pavilions are only bricks and mortar […] At best, they complicate the idea of what it means to come from somewhere.” Artists, much like the current global landscape, are imagining what life is like when they’re able to express themselves as they want to without the cacophonous shackles of the ‘shoulds’ often parroted by those interested in keeping a supremacist status quo. Brazil’s Jonathas de Andrade’s exhibition Com o Coração Saindo Pela Boca (With the Heart Coming Out of the Mouth) is such an example of this, using language and visual idioms as a means to surreptitiously subvert Jair Bolsanaro’s controversial governance of his country.
At the Chilean pavilion, we see Cecilia Vicuña’s NAUfraga, an extension of her Precarious project that began in 1966. Vicuña, one of the elder artists on show at the Biennale, has, for as long as she has been creating work, always challenged and openly, vocally criticised Chilean and international governments on the subject of indigenous rights and the exploitation of the country’s natural habitats and resources in favour of profit and gain.
Two other artists, who are incidentally long-standing friends as we speak about in our previous article here, that have successfully found the balance between celebration and resistance have been Zineb Sedira and Sonia Boyce representing France and Britain’s pavilions respectively. Sedira being the first person of Algerian descent to represent France, and Boyce is the first Black woman representing Britain. Both women refuse to stand alone as representatives of their own identity, instead choosing to share their platform with those of similar backgrounds and histories, creating a collective network both uplifting one another as well as holding powers that be accountable and daring to shine a light on history long-ago buried.
The Biennale this year is imaginative as it is grounded, hopeful as it is pragmatic, and no less wonderful because of it. Long may these artists’ voices remain and be uplifted.
The 59Venice Biennale is now open until November 2022.
The New York Times briefing this week had a headline that read: “A New Geopolitical Landscape”. This was shorthand script to explain the increasing global maturity of countries previously seen as ‘undeveloped’ by Western standards (evidently ignoring the fact most of these countries had only in recent memory gained their own national independence), and thus had been previously reliant on Western powers to buoy them in the murky waters of the world’s markets. These same countries are now reaching a point of economic, political, and ideological maturity, and so are able to stand apart from Western patronage and act on their own terms.
This new geopolitical landscape is being unwittingly mirrored at the 2022 Venice Biennale, greeting us through the city’s opened palazzo doors. The 5exhibition, curated by Cecilia Alemani, is a visual representation of such shifting geopolitical plates with artists from all corners of the world representing countries and their respective pavilions. This includes 5 new country participations: Cameroon, Namibia, Nepal, Oman, and Uganda. The Biennale’s theme, The Milk of Dreams, is a title taken from Leonora Carrington’s own Surrealist literature that Alemani describes in her press release as life “reinvented through the prism of imagination and one is allowed to transform and become other to oneself”.
It’s been fascinating to see this platform being offered, through Alemani’s bold curatorship, to a strong, audacious, and highly imaginative body of primarily women and nonbinary artists to curb and decentre the historical and present influence of Western, masculine-dominated thought. Once again, turning away from Western dependency and very much aware of their own validity and identity.
Artists throughout the Biennale represent their respective countries, yet as Frieze’s Jennifer Higgie astutely points out: “National pavilions are only bricks and mortar […] At best, they complicate the idea of what it means to come from somewhere.” Artists, much like the current global landscape, are imagining what life is like when they’re able to express themselves as they want to without the cacophonous shackles of the ‘shoulds’ often parroted by those interested in keeping a supremacist status quo. Brazil’s Jonathas de Andrade’s exhibition Com o Coração Saindo Pela Boca (With the Heart Coming Out of the Mouth) is such an example of this, using language and visual idioms as a means to surreptitiously subvert Jair Bolsanaro’s controversial governance of his country.
At the Chilean pavilion, we see Cecilia Vicuña’s NAUfraga, an extension of her Precarious project that began in 1966. Vicuña, one of the elder artists on show at the Biennale, has, for as long as she has been creating work, always challenged and openly, vocally criticised Chilean and international governments on the subject of indigenous rights and the exploitation of the country’s natural habitats and resources in favour of profit and gain.
Two other artists, who are incidentally long-standing friends as we speak about in our previous article here, that have successfully found the balance between celebration and resistance have been Zineb Sedira and Sonia Boyce representing France and Britain’s pavilions respectively. Sedira being the first person of Algerian descent to represent France, and Boyce is the first Black woman representing Britain. Both women refuse to stand alone as representatives of their own identity, instead choosing to share their platform with those of similar backgrounds and histories, creating a collective network both uplifting one another as well as holding powers that be accountable and daring to shine a light on history long-ago buried.
The Biennale this year is imaginative as it is grounded, hopeful as it is pragmatic, and no less wonderful because of it. Long may these artists’ voices remain and be uplifted.
The 59Venice Biennale is now open until November 2022.
The New York Times briefing this week had a headline that read: “A New Geopolitical Landscape”. This was shorthand script to explain the increasing global maturity of countries previously seen as ‘undeveloped’ by Western standards (evidently ignoring the fact most of these countries had only in recent memory gained their own national independence), and thus had been previously reliant on Western powers to buoy them in the murky waters of the world’s markets. These same countries are now reaching a point of economic, political, and ideological maturity, and so are able to stand apart from Western patronage and act on their own terms.
This new geopolitical landscape is being unwittingly mirrored at the 2022 Venice Biennale, greeting us through the city’s opened palazzo doors. The 5exhibition, curated by Cecilia Alemani, is a visual representation of such shifting geopolitical plates with artists from all corners of the world representing countries and their respective pavilions. This includes 5 new country participations: Cameroon, Namibia, Nepal, Oman, and Uganda. The Biennale’s theme, The Milk of Dreams, is a title taken from Leonora Carrington’s own Surrealist literature that Alemani describes in her press release as life “reinvented through the prism of imagination and one is allowed to transform and become other to oneself”.
It’s been fascinating to see this platform being offered, through Alemani’s bold curatorship, to a strong, audacious, and highly imaginative body of primarily women and nonbinary artists to curb and decentre the historical and present influence of Western, masculine-dominated thought. Once again, turning away from Western dependency and very much aware of their own validity and identity.
Artists throughout the Biennale represent their respective countries, yet as Frieze’s Jennifer Higgie astutely points out: “National pavilions are only bricks and mortar […] At best, they complicate the idea of what it means to come from somewhere.” Artists, much like the current global landscape, are imagining what life is like when they’re able to express themselves as they want to without the cacophonous shackles of the ‘shoulds’ often parroted by those interested in keeping a supremacist status quo. Brazil’s Jonathas de Andrade’s exhibition Com o Coração Saindo Pela Boca (With the Heart Coming Out of the Mouth) is such an example of this, using language and visual idioms as a means to surreptitiously subvert Jair Bolsanaro’s controversial governance of his country.
At the Chilean pavilion, we see Cecilia Vicuña’s NAUfraga, an extension of her Precarious project that began in 1966. Vicuña, one of the elder artists on show at the Biennale, has, for as long as she has been creating work, always challenged and openly, vocally criticised Chilean and international governments on the subject of indigenous rights and the exploitation of the country’s natural habitats and resources in favour of profit and gain.
Two other artists, who are incidentally long-standing friends as we speak about in our previous article here, that have successfully found the balance between celebration and resistance have been Zineb Sedira and Sonia Boyce representing France and Britain’s pavilions respectively. Sedira being the first person of Algerian descent to represent France, and Boyce is the first Black woman representing Britain. Both women refuse to stand alone as representatives of their own identity, instead choosing to share their platform with those of similar backgrounds and histories, creating a collective network both uplifting one another as well as holding powers that be accountable and daring to shine a light on history long-ago buried.
The Biennale this year is imaginative as it is grounded, hopeful as it is pragmatic, and no less wonderful because of it. Long may these artists’ voices remain and be uplifted.
The 59Venice Biennale is now open until November 2022.
The New York Times briefing this week had a headline that read: “A New Geopolitical Landscape”. This was shorthand script to explain the increasing global maturity of countries previously seen as ‘undeveloped’ by Western standards (evidently ignoring the fact most of these countries had only in recent memory gained their own national independence), and thus had been previously reliant on Western powers to buoy them in the murky waters of the world’s markets. These same countries are now reaching a point of economic, political, and ideological maturity, and so are able to stand apart from Western patronage and act on their own terms.
This new geopolitical landscape is being unwittingly mirrored at the 2022 Venice Biennale, greeting us through the city’s opened palazzo doors. The 5exhibition, curated by Cecilia Alemani, is a visual representation of such shifting geopolitical plates with artists from all corners of the world representing countries and their respective pavilions. This includes 5 new country participations: Cameroon, Namibia, Nepal, Oman, and Uganda. The Biennale’s theme, The Milk of Dreams, is a title taken from Leonora Carrington’s own Surrealist literature that Alemani describes in her press release as life “reinvented through the prism of imagination and one is allowed to transform and become other to oneself”.
It’s been fascinating to see this platform being offered, through Alemani’s bold curatorship, to a strong, audacious, and highly imaginative body of primarily women and nonbinary artists to curb and decentre the historical and present influence of Western, masculine-dominated thought. Once again, turning away from Western dependency and very much aware of their own validity and identity.
Artists throughout the Biennale represent their respective countries, yet as Frieze’s Jennifer Higgie astutely points out: “National pavilions are only bricks and mortar […] At best, they complicate the idea of what it means to come from somewhere.” Artists, much like the current global landscape, are imagining what life is like when they’re able to express themselves as they want to without the cacophonous shackles of the ‘shoulds’ often parroted by those interested in keeping a supremacist status quo. Brazil’s Jonathas de Andrade’s exhibition Com o Coração Saindo Pela Boca (With the Heart Coming Out of the Mouth) is such an example of this, using language and visual idioms as a means to surreptitiously subvert Jair Bolsanaro’s controversial governance of his country.
At the Chilean pavilion, we see Cecilia Vicuña’s NAUfraga, an extension of her Precarious project that began in 1966. Vicuña, one of the elder artists on show at the Biennale, has, for as long as she has been creating work, always challenged and openly, vocally criticised Chilean and international governments on the subject of indigenous rights and the exploitation of the country’s natural habitats and resources in favour of profit and gain.
Two other artists, who are incidentally long-standing friends as we speak about in our previous article here, that have successfully found the balance between celebration and resistance have been Zineb Sedira and Sonia Boyce representing France and Britain’s pavilions respectively. Sedira being the first person of Algerian descent to represent France, and Boyce is the first Black woman representing Britain. Both women refuse to stand alone as representatives of their own identity, instead choosing to share their platform with those of similar backgrounds and histories, creating a collective network both uplifting one another as well as holding powers that be accountable and daring to shine a light on history long-ago buried.
The Biennale this year is imaginative as it is grounded, hopeful as it is pragmatic, and no less wonderful because of it. Long may these artists’ voices remain and be uplifted.
The 59Venice Biennale is now open until November 2022.
