East City Art’s Highlights from the Venice Biennale (Part 1)

 Enwezor  views the exhibition not as a fixed narrative but as a series of events to be viewed through several themes or filters.  Those filters include Liveness: on Epic Duration which focuses on the notion that the exhibition—like life—is temporal and undulates through disparate, overlapping occurrences; Garden of Disorder focusing on the spatial characteristics of geopolitics and current events; and Capital: A Live Reading which puts Karl Marx’s most famous work on center stage, examining how the notion of capital accumulation is central to our current world order.  While Enwezor’s outlook might seem bleak, it underscores a palpable and exciting message:  that artists are in a unique position to shine a light on current affairs and guide the discussion as we look for ways to navigate the complex issues facing humanity.

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The opening vignette in the Arsenale sets the tone, plunging visitors into near darkness as it juxtiposes neon works by Bruce Nauman with a sculptural installation of sabers by the Algerian artist Adel Abdessemed.  This sense of visceral discord continues throughout the shipyards before giving way to a more nuanced, political sensibility in the Giardini.  In both locations, the most compelling works build across cultures or the first/third world divide, providing artists on the periphery a chance to inform the debate.  Here are just a few of those works which provide food for thought.

Mansaray’s drawings blend African proverbs and mysticism from his native Sierra Leone with a cutting glimpse into the Western industrial complex that supports war throughout the third world.

 The Chinese-b0rn artist presents a fully immersive theatrical spectacle, lining the walls with culturally traditional paintings whose calligraphy echos moments of life while grand, theatrical props are disbursed all over the floor or dangle in the air.  I found myself fascinated by the way in which the artist balances notions of chaos and serenity.

This arresting video from the British-born Boyce captures a spoken-word performance of the American rapper Astronautalis over-laced with the Dada-meets-jazz scat of Elaine Mitchener.  Rather than battle, the sounds form a layered conversation between two worlds.

The Biennale features four of Ofili’s most recent works which include references ranging from hip-hop to politics.

The Propeller Group, Vietnamese artists Tuan Andrew Nguyen and Phunam Thuc Ha, seeks to examine the intersection or art, brand identity and modes of production.  Their ongoing project, A Universe of Collisions, examines a uniquely rare occurrence in warfare—moments when the instruments of war collide in midair on the battlefield. Here the artists present, through high-speed videography, the meeting of two iconographic weapons from two world superpowers in a slow motion aerial ballet.

Jason Moran is one of two DC-based artists in this year’s exhibition.  A true multidisciplinary artist (he’s a noted Jazz musician as well), Moran’s installations at the Biennale investigate how the historical architecture of theaters shapes the interaction between audiences and musicians.  The venues which the artist models were active during the Jim Crow era (which the exhibition catalog defines as roughly 1865-1965) and so also highlight the status of African-Americans within the world of Jazz.

Munroe, the other DC-based artist in the exhibition (he splits his time between DC and North Carolina), creates dystopian, mixed-media realms that mix fantasy and reality.  Works at the Biennale weave together narratives from his childhood home of the Bahamas and seem to raise as many questions as they attempt to answer.  I found myself wondering if this caped crusader would save us from harm or send us straight into hell.

The Kenyan-born artist Wangechi Mutu presents a visually compelling installation incorporating collage, video and sculpture which questions  women’s role in society as it highlights the ways in which our rampant natural resource use impacts the globe.  The video piece is particularly engrossing.  The three-channel work begins with what appears to be a live-action snapshot of a woman’s grueling walk across the landscape before quickly morphing into animation that becomes more apocalyptic as time goes on.

 

Ishida elegantly captures the bleakness of the Japanese “lost decade” of economic stagnation with painted vignettes that are humorous on the surface but foreboding in content.

The main exhibition includes several outdoor works, including these by RAQS Media Collective.  The collective consists of New Delhi-based artists Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta and was formed in 1992.  For All the Worlds Futures, the collective has created a series of nine sculptures which from a distance seem to single out unnamed politicians for their political achievements.  Look closely however, and the viewer realizes that torsos are sliced, heads missing and in some cases the clothing hides a hollowed out shell.  The title of the series references the park in which King George V and Queen Mary were crowned emperor and empress of India in 1911 and the disfigurements thus offer up a heap of political criticism and critique.  Adding to this narrative is the fact that these sculptures are cast in bitumen and wax, two materials derived from oil, highlighting how global capitalism and the world’s hunger for oil plays into politician’s lust for power.

Coming up in Part 2 of our series on the Biennale, we’ll focus on the pavilions devoted to individual countries.