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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Just Amongst Ourselves - 2019
series of paintings oil on linen and canvas – variable dimensions
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Just Amongst Ourselves - 2019
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
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 Labirinto
– Enrico 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
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
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
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
production still
Nujoom Alghanem
Passage
– 2019
installation view