Venice
Art Biennale 2013: National Pavilions
Around Town – Republic Of Angola - Golden Lion for Best Pavilion. The Golden Lion for the Best National Participation went to Luanda, Encyclopedic City, the
first pavilion of Angola whose venue is the spectacular Palazzo Cini. The
International Jury assigned the prestigious award “for the curators and
artist who together reflect on the irreconcilability and complexity of
site”. The Pavilion hosts the
photographic works by the Angolan artist Edson Chagas with an installation and
a graphic project curated by Paula Nascimento and Stefano Rabolli Pansera
(Beyond Entropy Ltd) in collaboration with Thankboys.
Above: artist Edson Chagas, co-curator Paula Nascimento, Bice Curiger and co-curator
Stefano Rabolli Pansera.
Photograph courtesy Beyond Entropy
Palazzo
Cini: Republic of Angola Pavilion. Luanda,
Encyclopedic City is
exhibition curated by Paula Nascimento and Stefano Rabolli Pansera. The show is
composed by twenty-three photographic big format posters by Edson Chagas
setting up an installation open to the interaction with the audience. The
exhibition is compared with the collection of Ancient Art owned by Vittorio
Cini hosted in Galleria di Palazzo Cini.
Palazzo
Cini: Republic of Angola Pavilion. Botticelli e Aiuti’s Guidizio di Paride is
used as backdrops for the piles of photo posters by Edson Chargas. Central to
Edson Chagas’ work is a reflection on the ways in which images are used to give
form to the way the city is experienced. Edson Chagas’s Found Not Taken series,
which has been partially selected for the Angola Pavilion by the curators,
concentrates on the systematic cataloguing of abandoned objects that are
repositioned within an urban context to create new relationships between the
objects and their context, form and its codification.
The
installation is made up of piles of photo posters, that sit on the palazzo
floor ready to be taken home by the visitor.
Palazzo
Cini: Republic of Angola Pavilion. What relationship is created between spaces
and their images? What role are imagination and creativity allowed to play in
this urban taxonomy are all questions that Chagas asks? In the ambiguity of a
vision which uncovers and nonetheless reconstructs, what is delineated is an
urban cartography mixing documentary-like precision and poetic reconstruction:
a new way of observing the encyclopedic wealth of spaces around us and,
perhaps, a new way of inhabiting these spaces.
Above:
Maestro Francesco, San Paolo in Trono e Santi.
Photograph
courtesy Beyond Entropy
Palazzo
Cini: Republic of Angola Pavilion. The
public is invited to meditate on the theme of the Encyclopedic Palace through
the exhibit and the graphic project which gives the possibility to create one’s
own urban encyclopedia and catalogue starting from the unusual red hardcover
placed at the beginning of the exhibition itinerary and take home the posters of the installation.
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