Venice, la Serenissima as it is often sumptuously titled, or the most serene republic, once again serves as the backdrop to the 57th Annual International Art Exposition in 2017. While to the average tourist, Venice is a must-stop on any European adventure, La Biennale offers a unique opportunity for anyone who is so inclined to sample perhaps the most comprehensive sampling of global Contemporary Art, beyond your stock gondola ride and trip to St. Mark’s Piazza. Hosted every two years, hence its name, La Biennale showcases individual works of contemporary artists as well as nationally funded and maintained pavilions that are employed by participating nations in a variety of ways. Despite the fact that La Biennale serves as an exposition for all sorts of arts, including film, dance, and literature, this review will concern itself exclusively with the contemporary fine art exhibition.
Launching the careers of some of today’s most venerable contemporary artists, Yayoi Kusama for one, La Biennale provides a unique level of global exposure and singular locale where art can be consumed along the shores of the Adriatic as opposed to another dime-a-dozen gallery in some rapidly gentrifying part of town.
The first exhibition space, when approached from the west and therefore central Venice, is the Venetian Arsenal. The Arsenal can be imagined and as an aquatic piazza of sorts; a large open square of shallow water once used for shipbuilding and naval storage. This near-ancient collection of warehouses that frame a square of dry docks and shipwrights are perfectly repurposed as contemporary art spaces. With their exposed wrought iron rafters and overbuilt brick walls, the juxtaposition of the decayed industrial and naval might of Venice frames the art in a familiar way for visitors of contemporary art spaces. The exhibition space in the Arsenal is evenly divided between individual artists and several countries allocated floor space in said warehouses. Upon entering the exhibition proper, the long initial warehouse is subdivided into themed spaces such as “the pavilion of the common, the pavilion of traditions, and the pavilion of colors” just to name a few. The first piece seen on the walls to the right are a myriad of colored spools of thread, arranged haphazardly and projecting from a wall. Each of the colored threads connects to an article of clothing on a table about 3 yards from the wall. As one advances through the themed pavilions, the usual cadence of contemporary art takes its pace. Mixed media installations that reference perennially urgent issues like the constructs of gender, nationality and race. Pieces ranged in diversity from pillars of crystalline salt forms to large spheres of polychromatic fabric dangling from the high rafters.
As one shifts into the national exhibition spaces in the Arsenal, one must take note that these are quite different from the standalone pavilions seem in the fairgrounds. The nations on display at the Arsenal are later entrants to the Biennale and therefore their exhibitions are housed in a collection of buildings as opposed to discrete edifices. Some of these newer entrants, like Latvia, New Zealand, and Tunisia, had truly stunning and thought-provoking artwork on display. Latvia’s gallery was cloaked behind heavy cloth curtains so as to permanently darken the space. A series of twelve brass pillars each display etchings of Earth invaded by reptilian aliens and subjugating humanity with culture, religion, and economics. New Zealand’s artwork was an updated “Bayeux Tapestry” of sorts. A wide-screen video, several measures longer than tall, displayed a video of European contact with the native Maori and the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. The video displays live actors in period costume. Again, the thread of prescient introspection was on display in New Zealand’s pavilion with its head on tackling of the subject of colonialism.
Tunisia’s pavilion was far and away the most thought-provoking of the national pavilions, despite it being so easily overlooked. Masquerading as an information booth and manned by two smartly dressed young men in uniform, the Tunisian pavilion is in fact a “border control booth.” Oddly enough, the “guards” in the booth hand you a cobalt blue booklet that has a “freesa” embossed across the top of it. Opening your Freesa booklet, it explains that borders and nationality are constructs and you are free to move about planet earth, at which point the guards stamp your booklet. Given the many outstanding issues Europe is currently grappling with surrounding migration, refugees, and Islam, these themes are all seamlessly and subversively tackled by Tunisia’s seemingly unassuming entry.
Located in the extreme easternmost areas of Venice proper, La Biennale is hosted far from the maddening hordes of tourists circumambulating St. Mark’s Square and the eponymous Basilica. The national pavilions and exhibition spaces figure into two distinct areas that are a 10-minute walk from one another, making use of the old Venetian Arsenal as a repurposed exhibition space, and a dedicated fairground for the national pavilions. La Biennale is easily accessible to the errant traveler to Venice by means of il Vaporetto, which deposits visitors yards from the Venetian Arsenal or the national pavilion grounds one stop further east. Any self-described or aspiring aesthete would do well to pay this year’s Biennale a visit.