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Images of Loss: 52^nd Venice Biennale

In today’s context, a role of a curator has evolved, or de-structured to bring in public opinion within the realm of his individual ideas or preferences, in the manner of unrestricted solutions and it is exemplified in the mounting of 52^nd Venice Biennale, reports Amrita Gupta Singh from Venice.

Venice. Ancient, historic and picture-perfect, the city of aquamarine lagoons, canals, palazzos, gondolas, romance, music, art and culture. But what lies beneath its glamorous façade, what are its other ominous realities that forces its population to migrate to other towns?  Venice is a city that is sinking, and a new report by archaeologist Albert Ammerman suggests that this city is sinking faster than what was predicted in the 1960’s, and is vulnerable to high tides that each year erodes its architectural heritage and flood squares, affecting both its economy and the lives of its population. The problem is significant and reflected in the Italian government's declaration that the safeguarding of Venice is of national interest. The problem, however, does not belong to Venice in isolation; it includes the surrounding lagoon and its complex interdependencies between environment, architecture, and socio-economics. Vulnerability to both nature’s forces and man-made disasters is a reality of our contemporary times, where we conduct our every-day lives on the precipice of imminent destruction.

To contextualize this observation with the imagery in the pavilions of the 52nd Venice Biennale 2007 would also mean to understand the term “contemporary times or the present tense” in the context of art. The theme of this Biennale, curated by American curator, Robert Storr is ‘Think with the Senses, Feel with the Mind: Art in the Present Tense” focuses on contemporaneity of various countries and cultures, of addressing global themes in local forms. There are various debates regarding contemporaneity as there are various conflicting opinions about the proliferation of Biennales. Some claim that the Biennale as a form has exhausted itself, while others laud its explosion across the globe, in grandiose proportions. As Thierry de Duve, the French art critic says, “Interpretation of the phenomenon also oscillates between the optimistic embracing of a democratic redistribution of cultural power among established and “emergent” regions of the world, and the pessimistic recognition of a new form of cultural hegemony and re-colonization on the part of the West…There is no question that the reasons for the proliferation of art biennials are mainly if not exclusively economic. Culture sells, attracts tourists, generates economic activity, and is an integral part of the entertainment industry. I see no reason why we should regret this. …Capitalism will not be superseded in the foreseeable future. At best it can and must learn to behave more ethically and more equitably, which it does when it is in its own interest. So, rather than simply signalling either successful integration of the local into the global (the optimist’s view) or hegemonic appropriation of the local by the global (the pessimist’s view), I think that art biennials are, quite typically, cultural experiments in the glocal economy”.

The Venice Biennale is one of the oldest biennales, with its first art exhibition being inaugurated in 1894, and is one of the most important and coveted events in the arts calendar, and in this year’s event too, the assembling of arts professionals from all over the world, designer clothing, its glamorous parties (both on the land and the lagoon), proves its elitist status. But ironically, most of the artworks reflected our conflicted times in the apocalyptic images of war, violence, destruction, migration and dislocation. Here the notion of “contemporaneity was seen in that which is happening, capable of transmitting meaning at its moment of occurrence, while also including things that happened in the past, and when included in the context of today’s world becomes contemporary.” A question on contemporaneity implies a process, and continuous reflection, and that is what makes it interesting in itself, and if one could take this Biennale as another “cultural experiment”, one saw that it allowed for multiple political statements to be given voice to, thriving on cultural differences and confrontations, the flavour of the avant- garde, and inspiration from popular culture, codes and styles, a celebration of contemporary visual art, which is one sector that is most dynamic and enjoys the greatest freedom in the culture industry.

Another question that would require some investigation is the role of the curator in the context of this Biennale. Who actually are curators? Earlier, curators played the role of bringing together artistic productions and emotions under the rubric of a historical or a philological context. A theme, an artist, or a period was developed according to the curator’s scholarship, creating a hierarchy in the receiving of knowledge by the viewer. In today’s context, a role of a curator has evolved, or de-structured to bring in public opinion within the realm of his individual ideas or preferences, in the manner of unrestricted solutions. In December 2005, Robert Storr organized a conference in Venice “Where Art Worlds Meet: Multiple Modernities and the Global Salon”, which brought in some of the most critical minds of the global art world, and this colloquium proved to be the laboratory of most of the ideas that he developed for the Venice Biennale. Storr, a good friend of many artists, contacted them almost nearly directly, and at other times via galleries. Storr considers the visual arts as a field combining emotions, desires, sentiment, logical thought, political theory and philosophical concepts. As he says, “From Plato onwards, philosophers have divided and compartmentalized human consciousness more or less explicitly, pitting one faculty against another; mind versus body, reason versus unreason, thought versus feeling, criticality versus intuition, the intellect versus the senses, the conceptual versus the perceptual…the imagination is the catch basin into which this overflow spills and art cuts these channels that reconnect formerly isolated or segregated parts of consciousness to each other, while flooding and replenishing the whole of it like a river delta. Think with the Senses-Feel with the Mind is predicated on the conviction that art is now, as it has always been, by which humans are made aware of the whole of their being. The exhibition focuses on selected aspects of current production, and is not representative, either in terms of style, media, generations, nations or cultures…instead qualities and concerns found in contemporary art have been used as magnetic poles for gathering work from all seven continents. ”

   In a conglomeration of 76 national pavilions (the largest ever for the Venice Biennale), including a national pavilion for Turkey and a regional pavilion for Africa, this Biennale was spread in the two prominent areas of the Giardini gardens and the Arsenale, including individual exhibitions in the grand palazzos, collateral events such as exhibitions on all the islands, presentations by museums, projects by independent curators, performances, workshops, seminars, art interventions in public spaces and boats with touring floating shows. The official Italian Pavilion, after eight years of absence from the Venice Biennale, returned to the show as a space for representing contemporary Italian artists, and also the Venice Pavilion initiated a new departure where local creativity was given importance. There were many important names such as Sol Lewitt, Bruce Nauman, Sigmar Polke, Jenny Holzer, Sophie Calle, Tracey Emin, Emily Jacir, Gerhard Richter, Robert Ryman, Ellsworth Kelly  and from India, paintings by Nalini Malani (in the central Pavilion) and Riyas Komu (at the Arsenale). From painting to sculpture, print-making, photography, documentary film, music and sound, this Biennale incorporated multiple forms of art, sometimes ragged and uneven, without clear maps,  like our troubled times. The spaces at the Arsenale were illuminated by the artists from Africa, with the collective Check List curated by a group of experts specifically nominated for the task by Storr. The multiple faces of contemporary Africa, in the after-math of the official end of Aparthied ( ofcourse, apartheid has taken on new forms of expression in today’s world), the splits of tradition and modernity, the African obliged to look at himself and others with a critical eye, to re-write his/her own histories and create art languages that speaks of his specific cultural realities; a composite set of artists,  makes this regional pavilion one of the most exciting and talked about pavilions of this Biennale, to the extent that some have already stated that the 2007 Venice Biennale could go down in history as the African Biennale.

At the Arsenale, there were recurring images of environmental disasters, holocausts, horror, death and terror, to the extent that violence has become so much a part of our existence, as exemplified in a video work by a Bulgarian artist, of a young boy playing with a human skull like a football. The American artist, Emily Prince created a touching installation, a map of the world consisting of an infinity of faces of people killed in war, unknown portraits captured on the Internet, and turned to delicate drawings whose different colouring indicates their ethnic origin. Unlike the particular pavilions at the Giardini Gardens, the spatial dynamics at the Arsenale, a former ship-making yard, was very interesting in the context of the artworks, where the chipping paint, the peeling walls, the old brick columns and the hidden histories of the historic buildings co-related with the histories, translations and the psychological realities, mostly chilling, that the multiple artworks represented. Ofcourse, there was less of the East than expected, no individual Indian pavilion when there should have been one, given the translation of images by Indian artists, that is taking place in the global art scenario, and this has been attributed to logistical problems.

Another exemplary collateral event was the Pleinmuseum- Outstanding Professional Art presentations in Public Spaces or The New Museum as a Traveling Chameleon which translated into a mobile exhibition pavilion that travels to central squares of different cities, the hearts of public life. Every evening after sunset, the Pleinmuseum presented a variety of works from its fully digital collection, and in each location, new artists were proposed to contribute to this radical and progressive alternative to museums of contemporary art, an open and flexible museum that is approachable, forming an intrinsic part of urban life. Presented by the Arts Council England, Pleinmuseum illustrates the idea of a migrating museum and curatorial changes across the world. Designed by Rene Van Engelenburg, this museum focuses on the relationship between art and the public. A radical idea translated to concrete reality, this project only summarizes the awesome infrastructure, economy and vision that provide the necessary platforms for critical dialogue and emerging languages of representation, especially in the context of the museum as we normally understand it.

Art is composed of contradictions and paradoxes, and functions as praxis, a source of multiple interpretations. To understand the contemporary without considering its history, is negating the way modernity has manifested itself, via various correspondences in different parts of the world. Ours is an age caught in the paradox of time, simultaneously discovering and erasing the past, annihilating traditions under the onslaught of globalization, spiraling out of control. If the phenomenon of the sinking of historic Venice and its corresponding migrations provides a correlation to the artworks presented in the 52^nd Venice Biennale, then the notion of contemporaneity assumes significance, where multiple histories are manifested, not in an illustrative or didactic way, but as contemporaneity or “present tense” being understood not as a universal concept, but as dependent on the artistic and cultural values to which it refers to, the particularities, the differences and the meeting zones that define contemporary visual art.