Venice – International Art Biennale 2019
Giardini - PART ONE
National Pavilions
Australia – Austria – Belgium – Brazil – Canada – France – Germany –
Great Britain – Israel - Japan
photograph – Bonnie Elliott – production still –
Angelica Mesiti – Assembly 2019 – courtesy Australian Pavilion
Australia Pavilion
Assembly - Angelica Mesiti
Commissioner - Australia Council for the Arts
Curator - Juliana Engberg
Curator - Juliana Engberg
Evolving as performed translations in the styles of polyphony, dissonance, and cacophony and culminating in a moment of harmony, Angelica Mesiti has created an imaginable world in which a ‘contingent’ gathering of ‘the people’ is allowed to disintegrate and resolve by perpetually reforming and revolutionising itself. Mesiti situates her film in the architecture of power – the Senate chamber – and uses music and performance, moving from text to code, music to movement, from actions to occupations to represent the way a society assembles and builds upon itself. The exuberant energy she unleashes demonstrates the creativity and strength of community at a time when ‘Democracy’ is fragmenting and failing.
Assembly - 2019 - Angelica Mesiti
three-channel video installation in architectural
amphitheater
production still
photograph – Bonnie Elliott – production still –
Angelica Mesiti – Assembly 2019 – courtesy Australian Pavilion
Assembly - 2019 - Angelica Mesiti
three-channel video installation in architectural
amphitheater
production still
Angelica Mesiti
artist
photograph – Bonnie Elliott – production still –
Angelica Mesiti – Assembly 2019 – courtesy Australian Pavilion
Assembly - 2019 - Angelica Mesiti
three-channel video installation in architectural
amphitheater
production still
Austria Pavilion
Discordo
Ergo Sum - Renate Bertlmann
Commissioner - Arts and Culture Division of the Federal Chancellery of
Austria
Curator - Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein
Curator - Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein
Discordo ergo sum - Renate Bertlmann has conceived a new two-part, site-specific
installation that, in accordance with her overall approach, is characterised by
high formal and conceptual precision. Based on the artist’s programmatic
axiom, Amo Ergo Sum, the
impressive textual piece opposite the pavilion and the sprawling installation
of knife-roses spread out across the pavilion’s entire courtyard displays an
artistic commentary that makes the existential ambivalence of the human
experience tangible in both form and content. The pavilion itself serves as a
contemplation zone that, in the sense of a cartographic perspective, places
core aspects of Bertlmann’s art since the 1970s in a relationship with the new
installation in Venice.
Austria Pavilion
Discordo Ergo Sum - Renate Bertlmann
photograph
and copyright manfredi bellati
Belgium Pavilion
Mondo Cane - Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys
Commissioner - Federation Wallonie-Bruxelles
Curator - Anne-Claire Schmitz
Curator - Anne-Claire Schmitz
Mondo
Cane by Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys is a display of the human condition. The exhibition
features a group of automated puppets set amongst a series of large drawings of
pastoral scenes and steel grids that fence off the pavilion’s lateral recesses.
Some of these puppets are craftsmen – a musician, a shoemaker, a knife grinder,
a spinner – who faithfully exercise their respective skills. It is a utopian
world, pure and clean. Around the edges is a parallel world filled with
rogueing zombies, poets, psychotics, and dropouts. These two realities coexist
in the same space, but appear unaware of one another. They do not touch and
this segregation is evident. The pavilion acts as a true promenade, similar to
a touristic or anthropological experience reminiscent of an older Europe.
Brazil Pavilion
Swinguerra – Barbara Wagner and
Benjamin de Burca
Commissioner -
Jose Olympio da Veiga Pereira, Fundacao Bienal de Sao Paulo.
Curator - Gabriel Perez-Barreiro
Curator - Gabriel Perez-Barreiro
Swinguerra takes its title from swingueira, a popular dance movement in the north-east of Brazil, fused with the word guerra, meaning war. Wagner and de Burca’s work focuses on the powerful expressions of popular culture in contemporary Brazil, and their complex relationship with international and local traditions. Swinguerra provides a deep and empathic view of contemporary Brazilian culture at a time of significant political and social tension. In common with their former films, the artists work alongside their subjects in a horizontal and respectful relationship, sharing an understanding of the complexities of contemporary self-representation and awareness.
Barbara Wagner and Benjamin
de Burca
Artists
Brazil Pavilion
Swinguerra – Barbara Wagner and
Benjamin de Burca
Canada Pavilion
Isuma – Zacharias Kunuk, Norman
Cohn, Paul Apak, Pauloosie Qulitalik
Commissioner -
National Gallery of Canada
Curators - Asinnajaq, Catherine Crowston, Josee Drouin-Brisebois, Barbara Fischer, Candice Hopkins
Curators - Asinnajaq, Catherine Crowston, Josee Drouin-Brisebois, Barbara Fischer, Candice Hopkins
Isuma
- Our name, Isuma, means ‘to
think’, a state of thoughtfulness or an idea.
Isuma video art illuminates Canada’s forced relocation of the Inuit
people in the 1950s and the power of the media today to reclaim history and see
the best in us. One Day in the Life of
Noah Piugattuk premieres our newest feature, recreating a day in 1961
when Inuit life on the land changed forever.
Silakut Live From the Floe Edge is
a series of live online webcasts from Nunavut to the world. Lastly, Isuma Online presents
an online collection of Isuma and indigenous-language films available in thirty
countries.
Canada Pavilion
Isuma – Zacharias Kunuk, Norman
Cohn, Paul Apak, Pauloosie Qulitalik
France Pavilion
Photograph and copyright
Giacomo Cosua - Laure Prouvost, Deep See
Blue Surrounding You / Vois Ce Bleu Profond Te Fondre - French Pavilion at
the 58th Venice Biennale - 2019
Deep see blue surrounding you /
Vois ce bleu profond te fonder
Laure Prouvost
Commissioner -
Institut français with the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs and the
Ministry of Culture
Curator - Martha Kirszenbaum
Curator - Martha Kirszenbaum
Laure Prouvost has imagined a liquid and tentacular pavilion
structured around a reflection on who we are, where we come from, and where we
are headed. It discloses an escapist journey towards an ideal elsewhere, and
challenges the representation of a fluid and globalised world, in which diverse
unveiled and shared realities intermingle. A fictional film was produced over
the course of a road trip on horseback through France, with performances by characters of different ages and from
different backgrounds, with specific acting skills. A sculptural in situ
installation enriches and develops the film in the space and the context of Venice – a floating city built on water
and by water, a city of facade and backstage – and the Biennale with its notion of representation both appear as sources
of inspiration. Lachons les chevaux!
www.insititutfrancais.com/
Photograph and copyright
Giacomo Cosua - Laure Prouvost, Deep See
Blue Surrounding You / Vois Ce Bleu Profond Te Fondre - French Pavilion at
the 58th Venice Biennale - 2019
France Pavilion
Deep see blue surrounding you / Vois ce bleu profond te fonder
Laure Prouvost
Film still
Deep see blue surrounding you / Vois ce bleu profond te fonder
Laure Prouvost
Film still
France Pavilion
Deep see blue surrounding you /
Vois ce bleu profond te fonder
Laure Prouvost
Photograph and copyright
Giacomo Cosua - Laure Prouvost, Deep See
Blue Surrounding You / Vois Ce Bleu Profond Te Fondre - French Pavilion at
the 58th Venice Biennale - 2019
France Pavilion
Deep see blue surrounding you / Vois ce bleu profond te fonder
Laure Prouvost
Deep see blue surrounding you / Vois ce bleu profond te fonder
Laure Prouvost
Germany Pavilion
Natascha Suder Happelmann
Commissioner -
ifa (Institut fur
Auslandsbeziehungen) on behalf of the Federal Foreign Office, Germany
Curator - Franciska Zolyom
Curator - Franciska Zolyom
Natascha Suuder Happelmann has used a collaborative
process to develop a multimedia artwork, inviting artists from various
disciplines to participate. Together, architectural elements, sound,
sculptures, and installations create a space that makes the economic,
political, and social conflicts of the present day physically tangible. The
main concepts to be examined here are containment, isolation, and accumulation.
The installation reveals the consequences of these concepts and raises the
question of how they can be encountered. Beyond the pavilion, the work
continues in the form of publications, concerts, radio broadcasts, and
lectures, thus activating its questions in various contexts and self-organised
political spaces.
Franciska Zolyom
curator
Germany Pavilion
Natascha Suder Happelmann
Seen in the German Pavilion
Eva and Adele
Great Britain Pavilion
Cathy Wilkes
Commissioner -
Emma Dexter
Curator - Zoe Whitley
Curator - Zoe Whitley
Cathy Wilkes’ exhibition for the Biennale Arte 2019 is bathed in natural
Venetian daylight. The unadorned
architecture of the British Pavilion
provides the setting for an interconnected series of floor-bound sculptural
installations, paintings and prints. In the first room, the artist has created
a complex group of figures and objects surrounding a sepulchral form. Wilkes’
paintings evoke a snow-covered elsewhere, full of sadness, both dormant and
obscure. Profoundly moving and solemnly engaging, Wilkes appeals for our
courage to reject the notion that knowledge is always something we can possess.
Great Britain Pavilion
Cathy Wilkes
Great Britain Pavilion
Cathy Wilkes
Israel Pavilion
Field Hospital X - Aya Ben Ron
Commissioner - Michael Gov, Arad Turgeman
Curator - Avi Lubin
Curator - Avi Lubin
Field Hospital X (FHX)
is a mobile, international institution, established by Aya Ben Ron. It is an organisation that is committed to researching
the way art can react and act in the face of social ills and corrupt values in
society. FHX originated
with the intention to create a safe space to screen No Body, a video by
Ben Ron about abuse in the family, as well as to other stories that need to be
heard. Learning from the structure and practice of hospitals, health
maintenance organisations and healing resorts, FHX provides a space in which
silenced voices can be heard and social injustices can be seen. It launches at
the Israeli Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2019, and from there it
will continue to travel to various sites around the world, to develop and
expand.
www.fieldhospitalX.org/
Israel Pavilion
Field Hospital X - Aya Ben Ron
artist Aya
Ben Ron and Avi Lubin curator
Israel Pavilion
Field Hospital X - Aya Ben Ron
Japan Pavilion
Cosmo-Eggs – Motoyuki Shitamichi, Taro Yasuno, Toshiaki
Ishikura, Fuminori Nousaku
Commissioner - The Japan Foundation
Curator - Hiroyuki Hattori
Curator - Hiroyuki Hattori
This collaboration between an
artist, a composer, an anthropologist, and an architect aims to create a
platform from which to consider the ecology where humans and non-humans
coexist, as well as questions of where and how we can survive within our world.
Four instances of video footage filmed by Motoyuki
Shitamichi that capture ‘tsunami boulders’ washed ashore from beneath the
ocean are accompanied by Taro Yasuno’s
composition, reminiscent of a bird song consisting of automated sounds
performed on recorder flutes, and allegories developed by Toshiaki Ishikura in reference to various local beliefs and
folklore related to the tsunami. Fuminori
Nousaku was inspired by the architecture of the Japan Pavilion, linking together images, music, and texts to create
a unified spatial experience.
Part Two Follows
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