Monday, June 03, 2019

Venice: Biennale Arte - 2019 – Arsenale - National Pavilions: Ghana – India – Italia – United Arab Emirates


Venice – International Art Biennale 2019
Arsenale - National Pavilions
 Ghana - India – Italia – United Arab Emirates

Courtesy of the artist - Photo - David Levene

Ghana Pavilion
Ghana Freedom - Felicia Abban, John Akomfrah, El Anatsui, Lynette Yiadom Boakye Ibrahim Mahama, Selasi Awusi Sosu
Commissioner - Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture
Curator - Nana Oforiatta Ayim
Architectural Project – Sir David Adjaye OBE
Stratigic Advisor – Okwui Enwezor

Titled Ghana Freedom, after the song composed by E.T. Mensah on the eve of the birth of the new nation in 1957, the pavilion curated by Nana Oforiatta Ayim examines the legacies and trajectories of that freedom by six artists, across three generations, rooted both in Ghana and its Diasporas: through archives of objects in large-scale installations by El Anatsui and Ibrahim Mahama; representation and portraiture, both in the studio work of Ghana’s first known female photographer Felicia Abban and imagined by painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye; the relativities of loss and restitution in a three- channel film by John Akomfrah; and, lastly, in a film sculpture by Selasi Awusi Sosu. The elliptically shaped design of the pavilion by Sir David Adjaye explores the intersection of ideas linking the works.
El Anatsui
Earth Shedding Its Skin
- 2019
bottle caps and copper wires – variable dimensions



El Anatsui


Curator - Nana Oforiatta Ayim

  Courtesy the artist and White Cube - Photo - David Levene


Ibrahim Mahama
A Straight Line Through the Carcass of History 1649 - 2016–19
Smoked fish mesh, wood, cloth, and archival materials  
Variable dimensions


 
Ibrahim Mahama 


 
Felicia Abban
Untitled - Portraits and Self-Portraits -
c. 1960–70s
digital images generated from original prints

  Courtesy the artist - Photo - David Levene

Selasi Awusi Sosu
Glass Factory II
- 2019
Three-channel colour and black-and-white video installation
with glass bottles, stereo sound. 7’08”, 5’33”, 10’10”


 
Sir David Adjaye OBE

 
John Akomfrah
The Elephant in the Room – Four Nocturnes
– 2019
three-channel HD color video installation - 7.1 sound



John Akomfrah

  Courtesy the artist - Corvi-Mora, London - Jack Shainman Gallery, New York - Photo - David Levene

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Just Amongst Ourselves
- 2019
series of paintings oil on linen and canvas – variable dimensions 


 
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Just Amongst Ourselves
- 2019


India Pavilion
Our Time for a Future Caring - Atul Dodiya, Ashim Purkayastha, GR Iranna, Jitish Kallat, Nandalal Bose, Rummana Hussain, Shakuntala Kulkarni
Commissioner - Adwaita Gadanayak, National Gallery of Modern Art
Curator - Roobina Karode, Director and Chief Curator, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art
“I am not a seer, rishi or a philosopher of non-violence;
I am only an artist of non-violence and desire to develop the art of non-violence in the realm of resistance.”
M.K. Gandhi

Our Time for a Future Caring. The Indian Pavilion revisits, through diverse art forms, the indelible memory of Mahatma Gandhi, his philosophical ideas, and the many facets of Gandhi that continue to inspire, provoke, and challenge the public, intellectuals and artists alike. Our Time for a Future Caring is both a call for attentiveness and an invocation to shared futures. The exhibition weaves together artworks that either emphasise a historical moment, in direct collaboration or association with Gandhi, or stage imaginary encounters that resonate contemporary critical thinking, creating an opportunity for a renewed search and investigation into received notions of agency, action, and freedom. The exhibition elucidates the premise that Gandhi’s presence is far from being fixed in time and space. His ideals are difficult to ignore in an increasingly violent and intolerant world.
GR Iranna
Naavu – We Together – 2019


Nandalal Bose
Haripura Congress Panels – 1937

 
Shakuntala Kulkarni
Of Bodies, Armour, Cages – 2010-2012
photo performance


 
Shakuntala Kulkarni
Of Bodies, Armour, Cages – 2010-2012
cane armour


Shakuntala Kulkarni

photograph - courtesy Francesco Pantaleone - Palermo- Milano

Italia Pavilion
Ne altra ne questa: La sfida al LabirintoEnrico David, Liliana Moro, Chiara Fumai
Commissioner - Federica Galloni, Direttore Generale Arte e Architettura Contemporanee e Periferie Urbane, Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali
Curator - Milovan Farronato

Neither Nor: The Challenge to the Labyrinth is the project curated by Milovan Farronato which includes both never-before-seen and historical works of three major Italian artists: Enrico David - Ancona, 1966, Chiara Fumai - Rome, 1978 – Bari, 2017, and Liliana Moro - Milan, 1961. Neither Nor is inspired by La sfida al labirinto - The Challenge to the Labyrinth - a famous essay written by Italo Calvino in 1962, in which the author suggests the idea of a cultural work that can describe the complexity of a world that has lost all its references. Starting from the title itself, which in Italian uses the rhetorical device of the anastrophe, thus changing the normal word order, Neither Nor makes use of the structure of the labyrinth to stage an exhibition route with neither a beginning nor an end and open to parallel interpretations. The works on display and the installation itself converse and overlap to form a tangle of lines, forms, and tendencies reflecting the impossibility of reducing knowledge to a series of predictable trajectories.
Liliana Moro  
Ne in Cielo Ne in Terra – 2016
Neon – 173x16cm

 
Curator - Milovan Farronato



Liliana Moro
La Spada nella Roccia - 1998
handblown glass


Liliana Moro
La Passeggiata - 1988
70 pairs of iron rollerskates


Enrico David
Untitled - Group of Sculptures

Courtesy - The Church of Chiara Fumai - Photography Oto Gillen

Chiara Fumai
This last line cannot be translated – detail - 2017
 Mural at International Studio and Curatorial Program – ISCP - New York 2019


 Liliana Moro
Salti – 1997
Polistil tracks – pencil drawings on paper

   Courtesy National Pavilion UAE – La Biennale di Venezia - Photo Augustine Paredes of Seeing Things

United Arab Emirates Pavilion
Passage - Nujoom Alghanem
Commissioner - Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation
Curators - Sam Bardaouil - Till Fellrath

Nujoom Alghanem: Passage. This new site-specific, two-channel video installation expands Alghanem’s experimentation with contemporary Arabic poetry in the language of film. The installation is structured along two separate narratives, one ‘real’ and the other ‘fictional’, and explores the universal experience of displacement. Both films are simultaneously projected on the opposite sides of a large diagonally placed screen while sharing the same soundscape. The film’s Brechtian conflation of reality and fiction highlights the parallelism between its main protagonists, and emphasises the dualities underscoring their lives. It questions art’s ability to meaningfully impact the lives of those whose stories it seeks to tell.

Nujoom Alghanem
Passage - 2019
production still

 
curator Sam Bardaouil, filmmaker Nujoom Alghanem, Jack Lang and curator Till Fellrath

    Courtesy National Pavilion UAE – La Biennale di Venezia - Photo Augustine Paredes of Seeing Things

Nujoom Alghanem
Passage - 2019
production still



Nujoom Alghanem
 Passage – 2019
installation view
 












 

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