Studio Research: The Biennale
Hey Stranger!
It’s been a little while since I’ve come and written about what’s going on in the studio, and there’s lots of updates, well more so updates on what’s been going on OUTSIDE of the studio but is relevant to my exploration in the studio. Late July/early august I took a short study abroad trip for 2.5 weeks with my school to Venice, Italy to study works in the Venice Biennale. My time there was full of moments of curiosity and culture shock, but the art is what I want to focus on here. The art was everything, for the lack of a better way of explaining it. I felt so emotional the whole trip just from the amount of art I got lost in. There was so many works that just made me stop and feel myself forget how to breathe.
The Biennale is one of the largest exhibitions of contemporary artwork. It’s like the Art Olympics. Every two years a curator is selected to put together a showcase of relevant contemporary artworks to a theme that is chosen. There are two venues: The Venice Gardens and the Arsenal ( have tried inserting its proper spelling like 50 times and this website keeps autocorrecting! ugh!). The gardens have ~30 pavilions. The Arsenal and Gardens combined host about 75 countries and about 250-300 artists. Typically, each country that has a pavilion selects their artist as it is the moment to represent their culture in their own building and have 800,000 people see it. So I spent two weeks squeezing in as many works as my mind could take and as much walking as my legs could take, as this doubled as testing out how I travel after a year of focusing on getting my back stronger post-injury.
The theme chosen was the title: Foreigners Everywhere. Curated by Adriano Pedrosa.
https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2024/introduction-adriano-pedrosa
Just the title itself, I know walking in, that it’s going to go in so many directions: tourism, colonialism, climate change, violence, being a foreigner in your own body, genocide, being queer in a world catered to being cis and straight, and so many more relevant topics to contemporary societies! Every country had it’s own translation and reaction to the theme of the show as well as their own titles in each individual spaces to make their body of work shown cohesive.
This year’s Biennale blew me away honestly. It was my first year going. I want to jump right into the favorites, because this is going to turn into a lengthy post. I want to start with Singapore, their pavilion called Seeing Forest
https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/590083/robert-zhao-renhuiseeing-forest/
Showcasing Robert Zhao Renhui, whose work is scientific just as much as it is creative. He studied landscapes and wildlife over a ten year span. Particularly, he showed how many birds in Singapore that are going extinct because of how much urban developments cut down trees and kill existing nests, disrupting and killing not only their homes, but cause disorder to their patterns overall. He studies so many animal species in the project, including wild boar, deer, lizards, frogs, and more. He visually describes all the changes that take place in multiple installations: A giant two screen video series (with captions!) in the center of the room. To the right, old 90’s tv’s play a video of birds interacting with a waterhole over the course of years and the space is covered in branches and wood stands of varied sizes so there is a stark juxtaposition of nature and industry. To the left is a glass cast owl sitting at the top of a wooden stand, also is surrounded by branches. It’s looking out the window to the Venice canals. The main video screens played multiple films of Robert’s and I’m pretty sure me and my friend were the few who stayed through all of them. They contained so much information that I think everyone should watch. The article I linked has their information and is totally worth the read.
https://www.singaporeartmuseum.sg/Art-Events/Exhibitions/Venice-Biennale-2024 (contains the videos)
Image courtesy of Robert Zhao
Another favorite was Australia showcasing artist: Archie Moore titled: kith and kin. The installation space was haunting. The room is painted black and the installation is of a gigantic table over a pool that is just, black. I’m going to just copy and paste what is said directly from the Biennale:
“First Nations peoples of Australia are some of the oldest continuous living cultures on Earth, and statistically one of the most incarcerated. Archie Moore’s kith and kin is both evidence and reminder of these facts. The sprawling chalk on blackboard mural traces his Kamilaroi and Bigambul relations back 65,000+ years, including the common ancestors of all humans. Handwritten across the walls and ceiling, the family tree engulfs the audience. The education materials refer to the transmission of knowledge and what is left out of history. Kamilaroi and Bigambul words in the drawing assert Indigenous language revival initiatives, while holes signal colonial invasions, massacres, diseases and displacement that sever familial ties. The central reflection pool is also a void; a memorial to First Nations deaths in state custody attended by piles of coroners’ reports. Archie adds archival records referencing kin to demonstrate how colonial laws and government policies have long been imposed upon First Nations peoples. These bureaucratic papers documenting tragedies are cradled by the reflection of the family tree in the surrounding water. The artist uses his family history to make systemic issues uncomfortably tangible to audiences while providing a prescient reminder that we are all kin.”
https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2024/australia
Surprisingly enough, I was impressed with the USA’s pavilion. I actually didn’t know it was the US’s until after I left the pavilion! We showcased Jeffery Gibson, an indigenous mixed media artist who focuses on textiles, sculpture, bead working, found objects. Every part of the space, including the exterior of the building is vibrant. The title of the pavilion’s show was called: The Space in Which to Place Me—
”[it] transforms the U.S. Pavilion into an embodiment of Gibson’s radically inclusive vision for the future: a space in which Indigenous art and a broad spectrum of cultural expressions and identities are central to the American experience.”
https://www.jeffreygibsonvenice2024.org
Other favorites: Salman Toor, a painter who depicts intimate scenes of queer men that feel like a feverdream. He uses lots of viridian greens and teals. I’m obsessed to say the very least with the way he paints! His brushwork, his colors, how he sets the scenes, and the style he paints figures. His works were recommended to me to study by my faculty back in may so I was so lucky to get to obsess over these in person.
https://www.luhringaugustine.com/artists/salman-toor#tab:thumbnails
Frieda Toranzo Jaeger from the Mexico pavillion, she did this giant installation/ mixed media painting called: Rage Is a Machine in Times of Senselessness, that was at least 20 feet, multiple canvases (about ten) freestanding and were attached to eachother via door hinge and had attachments into the ceiling. This painting was one of the first pieces I really connected to. She references Frieda Kahlo throughout the piece, as well as the story of Sappho of Lesbos.
https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2024/nucleo-contemporaneo/frieda-toranzo-jaeger
Iva Lulashi of the Albania Pavillion is next. Her series is called Love as a Glass of Water and it’s based on the theory of the glass of water, linked to feminist Alexandra Kollontai, the theory is of a sexual revolution “where impulses are seen as a simple human necessity that must be satisfied with the lightness and carefreeness that a glass of water is usually drunk with.” Her compositions and thin glazes of color remind me of old VHS tapes or old 90’s-esque photos. They were all displayed in an installation meant to mimic a house so the paintings were displayed as if you are walking through someone’s living room, bathroom, etc.
Next is bronze statue of the artist herself Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo AKA Puppies Puppies. Her statement reads: "A sculpture for Trans Women. A sculpture for the Non-Binary Femmes. A sculpture for Two-Spirit People. I am a woman. I don’t care what you think. (Transphobia is everywhere and everyone is susceptible to enacting it at any moment) (Unlearn the transphobia brewing within) I am a Trans Woman. I am a Two-Spirit Person. I am a Woman. This is for my sisters and siblings everywhere. History erased many of us but we are still here. I will fight for our rights until the day I die. Exile me and I’ll keep fighting" (2022). I love the space chosen to showcase this piece, as well as its directness, it is equally vulnerable as it is powerful. I especially love the oxidation of the bronze from the passing of time. What I love about art is everything in this. The immortalization of the experience of the artist. She will stand forever, and stand true. And trans people will always be here.
Giulia Andreani does these acrylic monochromatic paintings (she also had glass sculptures but I was mainly looking at her paintings) that resemble historical archival photos in black and grey. The below photo lacks to show how big these are. These I believe to be focused on women in the industry of art, it’s inaccessibility to women in history—with scenes depicting women’s suffrage in Britain.
Bouchra Khalili’s The Mapping Journey Project, which is a collaborative storytelling piece that follows different migrants as they tell their story of displacement followed by years long journey of going place to place, excluded, stateless. While they speak, the viewer sees a hand tracing out their journeys on a map. The stories were vulnerable, discussing experiences of violence and abuse while fighting for citizenship and more. There were about ten screens in this space.
This year’s Biennale contained so much representation of cultural minorities on a global scale in an intersectional lens. For queer people, by queer people, for indigenous, by indigenous, so on and so forth. It is something that is historically lacking in museum spaces because the concept of the museum itself upholds the standard of the imperial west.
Congolese Plantation Workers Art League, CATPC was invited by the Netherlands to use their pavilion this year. Here is an article about the artworks, it’s a very good read, and it discusses the issue of an arts festival that upholds white supremacy. Their show was called: The international festival of blasphemy of the sacred https://artreview.com/the-congolese-collective-catpc-on-representing-the-netherlands-at-the-60th-venice-biennale/
Additionally to the Netherlands pavilion, Congo does have its own pavilion. Here is the description of work directly from the Biennale site:
Invisible: a ritual act of transmigration, of enthronement walks slowly, very slowly over the cobblestones in Venice, a collective act about the restitution of materials so cherished, so coveted on this planet. The Democratic Republic of Congo is always at the heart of the political stakes, and it's acting in Venice. The Biennale Arte 2024 is called Foreigners Everywhere. Invisible Foreigners. A tangible path is created between two point, a slow, very slow trajectory, where the artists mark their positioning in relation to human values. Vibranium: The artists are engaged in a process that involves restitution and vital materials for new technologies. The Democratic Republic of Congo is experiencing the paradox of abundance, the process of the immutability of abundance. The metaphor between having and not having, between possessing and dispossessing, the allegory between visible and invisible. It's a strange reality in the DRC to go from nothing to a masterful whole in the same instant.
Visible: A procession of dematerialization starts slowly towards a tangible journey, a collective awareness, a hoped-for culmination towards a material space, a physical space dedicated to the DRC throughout the Biennale Arte 2024, in Venice.
The art I saw makes me analyze my own studio practice and how I, too, can subconsciously uphold the global standard of the west because I have studied and learned through historical European art SO extensively. How do I contribute to these social issues in regard to my practice? The Biennale has definitely put this back in the frontseat of my mind with the art world and how I participate. While my current work will focus on my childhood and grief, I want to explore what these global social contexts mean to my studio practice through my career. This internal conversation I continue to have is what I care about, and is relevant to my future, so now I have to figure out what I want to do about it. How can I collaborate with community and bring it into my studio, and expand outside of myself?
Til next time Stranger!
