photograph by Manfredi Bellati
LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005
Giardini - Japanese Pavilion - with all the distractions outside - at last I'm inside the Biennale which this year has been dubbed "La Biennale delle Donne" because for the first time in the history of its 110 years of activity the direction has been entrusted to two women directors, Mari­a de Corral and Rosa Marti­nez - art historians, critics and independent curators from Spain. The two exhibition projects - The Experience of Art (in the Italian Pavilion) and Always a Little Further (at the Arsenale) are curated and conceived respectively by Mari­a de Corral and by Rosa Martinez.

Let's start in the Japanese Pavilion with a great lady photographer - Ishiuchi Miyako "Mother's 2000-2005 - traces of the future" this exhibition of photos and other images creates a portrait of various items left behind by the artist's mother, through these she is able to reflect quietly on the discordant relationship the two women had, while contemplating what she describes as "Sadness beyond imagination". The exhibition can also be seen as work that attempts to recapture the "mother" as a "woman".

www.jpf.go.jp/venezia-biennale/