“We listen in order to interpret our world and experience meaning”
Pauline Oliveros
#BiennaleArte2024 - National Participations - Arsenale
Italy Pavilion
Massimo Bartolini - Due qui / To Hear
In the Italy Pavilion in the Arsenale - Massimo Bartolini's exhibition Due qui / To Hear - curated by Luca Cerizza. Playing on the homophones "two here" - due qui in Italian - and "to hear," this project's title highlights listening as a form of attention to others. The acoustic paradigm is both a physical experience and a metaphor, encouraging us to listen to the Other—whether human, mechanical, or natural. For Bartolini, art is a path to knowledge, and the project suggests that "lending an ear" can be a tool for self-improvement within our global community. Through sculptures, installations, sound works, and performances, with a range that is characteristic of the artist’s practice, it aims to create a context of experience.
A small statue of a Pensive Bodhisattva, symbolizing enlightened inactivity, sits motionless on a long recumbent column. This column, resembling a demarcation line, functions as an organ pipe with a fan creating a low, steady drone. The sound, evoking circular time, reinforces the Bodhisattva's meditative state.
Pensive Bodhisattva on a Flat - 2024
The colors of the two long walls in this Tesa reference how scientists and musicians, dating back to Isaac Newton, have linked specific hues to musical keys. Here, green and purple correspond to A and A flat, as suggested by composer Alexander Scriabin in 1911. A represents the key of the organ Bartolini presented at Centro Pecci in Prato - 2022-23 - while A flat is the key of the work heard in this room.
Pensive Bodhisattva on a Flat - 2024
Due Qui, 2024 is the largest of Bartolini's installations made from scaffolding pipes, modified to function as an organ. Like many of his works, it transforms materials to evoke a Baroque sense of wonder, where contrasts spark amazement. The scaffolding, typically associated with labor, becomes a vessel for spiritual music, creating a "musical edifice" rather than a physical one.
Due Qui - 2024
"Echoing minimalist sculpture, the work is animated by a natural element: a conical wave called a - soliton - resembling a tsunami. Repeated like a lab experiment, its continuous, silent pulsation creates a hypnotic movement, aiding meditation. The wave, a beating heart and equilibrium point in the labyrinthine space, is surrounded by sound."
The walk-through structure is designed like a Baroque-era Italian garden, with a circular sculpture, Conveyance - 2024 - serving as a central fountain-like feature and bench. This spot is perfect for listening to a stereo composition created by experimental musicians Caterina Barbieri and Kali Malone. Their piece, Mute vette - A Reflection That Shines From One Mind Upon Another - features two interwoven melodies in A-flat major, played on motorized rolls - below - like giant music boxes. As visitors move through the space, their movements help shape the ever-changing sound experience.
Conveyance - 2024
Conveyance - 2024
In the Giardino delle Vergini, a choral work for three voices, bell plates, and vibraphone by Gavin Bryars and his son Yuri plays through speakers hung from tree branches. Gavin, a key figure in the minimalist avant-garde, previously collaborated with Bartolini for a major retrospective. This new piece, inspired by Roberto Juarroz’s poem A veces ya no puedo moverme - Sometimes I can no longer stir myself - explores the connection between humans and the environment. The speakers, like shoes hanging from wires, suggest humanity's interaction with nature and the idea of humans as part of the environment.
A veces ya no puedo moverme - Sometimes I can no longer stir myself - 2024
Italy Pavilion
Massimo Bartolini - Due qui / To Hear
#BiennaleArte2024 - National Participations - Arsenale
United Arab Emirates - Pavilion
Artist Abdullah Al Saadi - Sites of Memory, Sites of Amnesia
Artist Abdullah Al Saadi is a wanderer, poet, and storyteller who chronicles his journeys in the wilderness through art. His solo exhibition at the UAE Pavilion features eight works reflecting his creative process, akin to the practices of classical Arab poets who immersed themselves in nature before composing their poetry. Over forty years, Al Saadi has crafted unique narratives, meticulously archiving his maps, stones, scrolls, and drawings in tin boxes, stored in metal chests like treasure. Visitors can engage with his world, experiencing his studio rituals of creation, memory, and forgetting.
"A wanderer, chronicler, cartographer, poet, decipherer, alchemist, memory carrier,
and storyteller."
Artist - Abdullah Al Saadi
"Through a process of assiduous archiving, Al Saadi keeps his maps, stones, scrolls, and drawings in tin boxes of various shapes and sizes. In turn, they are stored in big metal chests like treasure boxes, numbered, dated, and coded, as if he is creating and preserving a collective memory for the future."
The Archives
"...solo exhibition features artworks that were produced on his journeys in the wilderness and proposes to look at his creative process in relation to the practices of Arab poets centuries ago. During his journeys, Al Saadi starts to draw, paint or write once he feels immersed in nature. Similarly, classical Arab poets described this immersion as the process leading up to the composition of their poems."
The Slipper's Journey - 2014-2015
Journey in the Footsteps of Camar Cande - 2017
United Arab Emirates - Pavilion
Artist Abdullah Al Saadi - Sites of Memory, Sites of Amnesia
#BiennaleArte2024 - National Participations - Arsenale
Republic of Benin - Pavilion
Chloé Quenum, Moufouli Bello, Ishola Akpo, Romuald Hazoumè
Everything Precious Is Fragile
In the Benin Pavilion the exhibition - Everything Precious Is Fragile - draws from Yoruba Gẹ̀lẹ̀dẹ́ traditions, addressing the fragility of the contemporary world amid ecological challenges, conflicts, and social inequalities. In collaboration with Benin’s traditional rulers, the curators embrace the transient nature of life—human, plant, and animal.
"The pavilion envisions a compassionate future and challenges perceptions of fragility and strength. The Arsenale’s pavilion includes a library on colonial legacy, Indigenous knowledge, African representation, and biodiversity loss. It proposes urgent questions on the material and philosophical nature of fragility. Is fragility a strength or a weakness?"
Republic of Benin - Pavilion
Curator - Azu Nwagbogu
#BiennaleArte2024 - National Participations - Arsenale
Applied Arts - Pavilion
Beatriz Milhazes
Beatriz Milhazes, a leading Brazilian artist, explores color in the expanded field of painting, blending abstract and figurative elements, high and low art. Her five large-scale paintings for the Applied Arts Pavilion draws on the colors and patterns of traditional woven textiles from various cultures, displayed in the gallery. In Memórias do Futuro I Milhazes intertwines her motifs with textile patterns, creating vibrant compositions based on a grid. The featured tapestry, Pindorama - 2020–2022 - takes its name from the Tupi-Guarani word for pre-colonial Brazil.
Beatriz Milhazes - Pindorama - 2020-22
Applied Arts - Pavilion
Beatriz Milhazes - Memórias do Futuro I - 2022
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