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A tad sour, a tad sweet: The milk of dreams at the Venice Biennale

Even perfectly installed, beautifully lit, optimally curated, the fifty-ninth Venice Biennale, which opened to the public on April 23, lacks something emotional. Unfortunately, this shortcoming is not a detail. On the contrary, it becomes more relevant considering the title chosen by curator Cecilia Alemani for the event: The Milk of Dreams, inspired by a book by English artist Leonora Carrington. Going through the main exhibition – in the Biennale Giardini and the Arsenale rooms – we experience a slowness; our eyes look for novelties and we become impatient, we want to see something surprising, astonishing or at least frightening. But not much happens. We encounter hundreds of works that we could have seen in an ordinary museum, either because of their size or because the show’s theme is taken too literally. It is spelled out and hollered as if to mask its feebleness: barking dogs seldom bite. There is little room for imagination. Dreams seem to be replaced by an exhibition resembling an ethnographic atlas or oceanographic and anthropological research. Perhaps because this Biennale, imagined and projected over the last three years, was born under a strange sign – first the pandemic and now the war. It is difficult to relearn how to see and interact with the outside world. In an interview I did with her weeks before The Milk of Dreams, Cecilia Alemani explained a few things to me. As she was forced to organise everything via Zoom – the app we all used in Pandemic to hold meetings, but also to see friends – the Biennale became an intimate conversation. This illustrates why it is less glossy and more science-based.

Another interpretation – valid for all exhibitions – may lie in our difficulty in adapting to the new ideas and issues of art in the last two years. That is: how to rethink exhibitions, works and the enjoyment of culture. Is it possible to create a Biennale without a cyclopean approach in terms of ideas and size? Above all, do we want to renounce this whirlwind of encounters, discoveries, spiritual and physical journeys? The answer is no, despite everything that has happened.

The Milk of Dreams begins with a large sculpture depicting an elephant, by Katharina Fritsch, an artist who won the Golden Lion for her career, in this edition; the elephant symbolises matriarchal society, but is also a glimpse of future grace and prosperity. But too bad that this future is not clear-cut: many artists invited by the Biennale are not young, like Andra Ursuta and Rosemarie Trockel, who open The Milk of Dreams. As well as the second artist was awarded a Golden Lion, Cecilia Vicuña, whose magnificent drawings are in another beautiful Giardini room. It is true that physical age has never imposed limits on creativity. But, in a Biennale of contemporary art, it is bizarre to choose so many artists with history made, as well as long-dead names, even if they are an inspiration.

Dozens of women fill the Biennale, unknown or renowned artists such as Barbara Kruger and Louise Nevelson. Many of the works presented encompass sewing, fabrics, carpets and paintings, in scenes embroidered with pearls, small shells and electric wires, among other materials. This creates a trend that, despite the desire to overthrow traditional conceptions of femininity, clings to colonial stereotypes. Inspired by the wonderful work of land artist Walter De Maria, Delcy Morelos’ installation at the Arsenale is one of the Biennale’s most interesting. It invades the venue with an expanse of damp earth, on which the spectator can walk, smell, becoming more and more part of it with each step, like fertilising humus for the future. Also in the realm of fabrics and the like, Emma Talbot and Kapwani Kiwanga’s colourful curtains at the Arsenale are less convincing. The Milk of Dreams looks like a bourgeois room to please a hypothetical collector. It’s closer to a market idea than to the discovery of a new world. And, as we wrote above, dreams are far away and slow to arrive. While the old models are ahead of us, more alive than ever.

The 2022 Biennale is the perfect mirror of the enormous change that each of us is experiencing: a change of habits that leaves us stripped naked and awkward about our bodies – just like animals changing their skin. We cannot ignore the arrival of a new era. But its outlines are still obscure and unnoticed. We have no idea what to wear for this encounter with the unknown.

The reality of the surrounding national pavilions did not change this general perception.

In the Belgian pavilion, the artist Francis Alÿs would have deserved at least a mention: The nature of the game is a perfect exhibition that takes us through his poetic universe. The atmosphere is magical and enchanted given the beauty of the films and paintings in this small retrospective, which help to understand the passions that inspire Francis and his career. A special invitation to discover the spots and occasions in life that guided the artist over the years.

In the French representation, Dreams have no titles by Zineb Sedira is a very… French pavilion. That’s right. The taste and the attention given to cinema and its current and past forms, as well as the scenographies, are also reminiscent of the Nouvelle Vague. Dreams have no titles won a special mention as Best National Participation, “for the construction of a community in the diaspora and the analysis of the complex history of cinema beyond the West”.

The awarding of the Golden Lion to Britain did not sit well with me. Sonia Boyce’s pavilion, entitled Feeling Her Way, was awarded for “another reading to personal stories, using sound and showing hidden and unheard narratives sung by black women”- a fairly easy choice in an age where everyone wants to be post-colonialist at any price.

For her part, Simone Leigh (USA) could have done her Sovereignty in any gallery in the world, even at the Matthew Marks that represents her: the pavilion is simply furnished with sculptures of all sizes. But, today, it is essential to reflect on the complexity of the venue. Three years vested in basically placing statues seems like too much. And does turning the American site into an African hut help the public to reflect on colonialism? Where is the imagination that aims to change the world?

In the Brazil pavilion, Jonathas De Andrade’s Com o coração saindo pela boca is this Biennale’s most original representation. On the walls of the block designed by architects Henrique Midlin and Amerigo Marchesin in 1964, Jonathas brings together more than 250 idiomatic expressions about the body, as a kind of backbone for sculptures, photographs and a video installation. The aim is to convey emotions whose most appropriate terms are those linked to human beings’ physical aspect: “Language offers clues to talk about the collective feeling from the body and, with that, try to explain the untranslatable”, says Jonathas about his super-pop project.

For the first time in many years, the Italian pavilion has enough quality to compete with the other national ones: Storia della notte e destino delle comete, by Gian Maria Tosatti, is a great example of how art can question the history of a country and denounce a state of abandonment and economic collapse, using poetry and silence. Tosatti, with the help of set designer Margherita Palli and curator Eugenio Viola (Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Bogotá, Colombia), has devised three large rooms to illustrate Italy’s industrial dream in the 1960s and 1970s and its demise. A great flashback to see the future. We hope it will be better!

Finally, four other original national representations.

Saudi Arabia: the long black tree, almost lying on the ground but bursting with energy, makes the space of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia almost romantic. The artist Mohannad Shono, represented by the ATHR gallery in Jeddah, stood out for his intervention in the first edition of the Desert X Biennale, in the Arabian desert of Alula. A simple pavilion but packed with intuitions.

Peru: the title of the Peruvian pavilion, dedicated to the artist Herbert Rodríguez, is wonderful: Peace is a Corrosive Promise. Here’s what’s left of his work in the 80s: while the country was plunged into chaos and defeat, Herbert worked to defend human rights, supporting anarchism with theatre, actions and paintings. In 1989, he founded the “Art-Life” project. Precious!

Australia: surrounded by a mega-screen with several images (violence, war, sex or politics), the artist Marco Fusinato plays an electric guitar during the whole Biennale season, until the end of November. A continuous and deafening jam-session, based on a noise soundtrack to underline our world’s dystopia. It is no accident that the pavilion is entitled Desastres.

Korea: artist Yunchul Kim’s project Gyre wants to probe the notion of the world as a labyrinth, where non-human objects and material reality coexist. We see large mobile sculptures in the pavilion, which change colour and shape depending on the light and atmosphere. Even with an exaggerated passion for science and its results, Kim’s works will soon become fantastic technological junk. Where is the attention paid to the environment, so loudly trumpeted by the Biennale?

The Venice Biennale can be visited until November 27, 2022.

 

Matteo Bergamini is a journalist and art critic. He’s the Director of the Italian magazine exibart.com and also a collaborator in the weekly journal D La Repubblica. Besides journalist he’s also the editor and curator of several books, such as Un Musée après, by the photographer Luca Gilli, Vanilla Edizioni, 2018; Francesca Alinovi (with Veronica Santi), by Postmedia books, 2019; Prisa Mata. Diario Marocchino, by Sartoria Editoriale, 2020. The lattest published book is L'involuzione del pensiero libero, 2021, also by Postmedia books. He’s the curator of the exhibitions Marcella Vanzo. To wake up the living, to wake up the dead, at Berengo Foundation, Venezia, 2019; Luca Gilli, Di-stanze, Museo Diocesano, Milan, 2018; Aldo Runfola, Galeria Michela Rizzo, Venezia, 2018, and the co-curator of the first, 2019 edition of BienNoLo, the peripheries biennial, in Milan. He’s a professor assistant in several Fine Arts Academies and specialized courses. Lives and works in Milan, Italy.

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