Page 94 - ARTE!Brasileiros #47

THE POWER OF ART ENGLISH VERSION
what we lived in the moments before the first June 3. In this context, with a loving, most famous and commented of this edition that is undoubtedly Barca Nostra, the Swiss
creative and rebellious drive that was generated in the months before and after the Christoph Büchel. He took to Venice a shipwreck in 2015, carrying almost a thousand
first #NiUnaMenos appeared outside the museum - in the street, in the square, in the refugees and only 28 survived. According to a text on the Egyptian site Mada, written by
classrooms and in the social networks - images and narratives that have surfaced issues Alexandra Stock, the total cost to transport the ship to the show has reached immoral
related to sexuality, gender and sexist violence. The NUM Project sought to gather 33 million euros.
these things, motivated by the belief that the imagination has the power to change With works that carry this type of contradiction, where to be a matter of urgency absurd
history, by the certainty that in posters, murals, short reflections, urban performances, values are expended and formalization reduces the content to mere illustration, this
interventions in marches there is a great transforming and destabilizing potential not biennial is already part of a low level. Even an artist with a hard work, like the Mexican
only of the literary and artistic canon, but of the heterosexist and patriarchal tradition. Teresa Margolles, ended up in this same tune, when displaying parts of a concrete wall
How did you end up working with the biennial? full of bullets, transported from Ciudad Juarez, metropolis that borders the United
We sent the proposal to the BIENALSUR call and we were selected. We always work States. The work of 2010 was already talking about walls long before the Trump
on self-management. In fact, the book was financed collectively with an Ideame administration, but in Venice it loses its strength by becoming an illustration of the
[collective financing platform]. We always wanted to physically gather the work in a president’s backward proposals.
big exhibition and we were looking for a connection that could meet our needs. But
the production left much to be desired and, from the project, we ended up asking for DOPPELGÄNGER
a lot of material and economic resources. Besides the fake news, another theme of this edition of Venice, are the doubles, which
What are the relevant themes in the project’s work? And what formats do you means dealing with issues such as copying and cloning. In that sense, one of the good
normally work with? works of the show is the new video of Stan Douglas, Doppelgänger, about the astronaut
There are visual arts, performance recordings, photos, literature, video and installations. Alice who is teleported to a spaceship, but does not act like its original figure, in a
The work is done by artists and non artists. This is important: the NUM project was futuristic staging.
born from the desire to express creative impulses in response to a specific moment. The idea of double is materialized also in the curatorial concept in the mirroring of the
In this sense, this project has a very strong burden on its diversity: it pulsates the two great spaces of the exhibition, Arsenale and Central Pavilion, in the Giardini, both
desire to imagine and reflect from art. We are many and very different, but this desire with the same artists. The double projection Doppelgänger, for example, is in the Central
challenges us all, and that is what we are working on. Both art and feminism are infinite Pavilion, while in Arsenale Douglas is seen with staged photos of the series Scenes from
in their subjectivity, we do not intend to represent an entire movement or to manifest the Blackout. The exaggerated scenography of the Arsenale, in fact, with huge plates
a special message, only to make room for it. Therefore, there are traditional artists of apparent wood, hiding the grandeur of the place, is another low point of the show.
with us such as Ana Gallardo and Fátima Pecci Carou, as well as professors of plastic
arts,, journalists, activists, students, etc. The works are collective and individual. NATIONAL REPRESENTATIONS
In years of weak main show, the national representations usually compensate. That was
58 VENICE BIENNALE | PAGES 20 TO 24 not the case now in 2019, except for rare exceptions, including Brazilian pavilion and
TH
Lithuania’s winning pavilion, an opera that takes place on a fake beach for eight hours,
VENICE EMPTIES ITSELF but lasts one hour. Sun and Sea (Marina), by Rugilé Barzdziukaité, Vaiva Grainyté and
Lina Lapelyté, is a performance about the simplicity of being by the sea, from sunblock
INTO “INTERESTING TIMES” to complaining about not being able to relax. Basically it’s about nothing but sung as if
everything was important.
NEW EDITION OF THE ITALIAN BIENNIAL, CURATED BY RALPH RUGGOF, BRINGS Delicately moving between the spectacular and the simplicity, the performance deservedly
TOGETHER WORKS THAT ILLUSTRATE URGENT ISSUES WITHOUT COMPLEXITY won the Golden Lion, mixing fifteen singers with twenty other extras, among them several
children, in an action that follows a script, but is full of improvisations.
BY FABIO CYPRIANO Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca, with Swinguerra, empower a marginal Brazil
with the popular culture of the northeast of the country, specifically a movement called
FOR THE FIRST TIME, the Venice Biennale, created on the models of the universal exhibitions, swingueira. The video presents several narratives, created in partnership with the
that is, where each country shows the best, presents a pavilion for refugee artists. members of this dance group, mixing dream and reality, showing how these spaces of
Neverland, by the Turkish artist Halil Altindere, would be this space, but it is only a façade, music and dance are places that contradict the current official discourse of the country
which becomes a metaphor in the fake news era, one of the themes of May you live in of exclusion and prejudice. Art in Brazil’s pavilion is not illustration, but a vital experience
interesting times, title of the 58 Venice Biennale. of resistance and understanding of the human, all that was missing in the main show.
th
Altindere has already worked with this kind of social critique in Wonderland (2013), a hip
hop clip that addressed the gentrification processes in Istanbul, premonitory because it EXHIBITION INTERNATIONAL | PAGES 26 AND 27
Turkish capital. The work has become a fever in contemporary art shows, including the A COLLECTION OUT
was made just before demonstrations against the destruction of Taksim Square in the
biennials of Istanbul in 2013 and São Paulo in 2014. OF THE SYSTEM
Now in Venice, however, Altindere seems to reaffirm the obvious: lie and social disparity
are keys to the present tense, there is no viable inclusion in 21st century societies, and COLLECTION INITIATED BY MAX MARA BRAND FOUNDER EXHIBITS PERSONAL
his work is a mere aesthetic commentary on this catastrophe. VISION OF CONTEMPORARY PRODUCTION, WITH NO COMPROMISES TO THE
Neverland would be inserted in one of the themes of this edition of the Biennial, the fake ART CIRCUIT
news, defined by its curator, the North American Ralph Ruggof. The name of the biennale
already points to this, since “you live in interesting times” would be an expression quoted BY FABIO CYPRIANO
as a Chinese proverb by figures such as Hillary Clinton, but according to him, it is these
cultural translations that are not confirmed. How boring. AMID THE INTERNATIONAL TREND in which collectors create art spaces that end up serving
If the phrase itself is already bland, the Biennial falls into simplifications, such as the more to showcase their power and enhance their own image, the Collezione Maramotti

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