A holiday in the Mediterranean some years ago coincided with the Venice Biennale and I spent a day excitedly exploring the pavilions. The Biennale alternates between themes of architecture and art, an idea that came into being in 2003, so prior to that, countries could send whatever they wanted and it is quite possible to trace the cultural and social history of countries through their choices. As I wandered from one pavilion to another, I couldn’t help but wonder what connected all of it. Was this an attempt to encapsulate the present or predict the future? The Australian exhibitor that year was Yvonne Koolmatrie, an artist of Aboriginal heritage specialising in woven basket forms. She was to be followed by two other artists of similar heritage and a number of female artists looking at socio-political themes. To be selected is an honour for any artist of any country but as writer Juliana Engberg pointed out being ‘presented’ by your country is not the same as ‘representing’ your country.[1]
One exhibit though has remained with me from 1997 consisting of a thousand hard bound, quarto sized books on palettes and advertised as free. I don’t recall which country it came from but the sentiment or consumerist waste was probably universal. The books were very thick compilations of seemingly random images. The public snapped them up, gradually emptying the palettes believing that getting something for free was a bonus and particularly given the generous proportions of the gift. Realising that they had been duped, but not entirely sure how and why, they abandoned the books on ledges, benches and lagoon wall or consigned them to bins all the way back to St Mark’s Square. Of course, what the visitors didn’t realise was that the very act of uptake and subsequent abandonment was a statement about consumerism. The book was not just worthless but indecipherable. Fair enough. An ecological statement with bite. Whether the exhibiting country took it upon themselves to retrieve this art detritus was never recorded but they could hardly return them to the palettes given that the very emptiness was ironically symbolic. I always felt that there was something cynical in the choice of artist and work.
A Biennale in Venice is quite different from an Art Fair where the main message is to buy and sell art. Each country, or at least a curatorial committee in each country, searches for an artist who fits the current theme and, in some way, the essential character of the exhibiting country. My question though is just how valid is this process and result? Curators have been attempting to predict or manipulate the art world from the days of the academies. Selected artists have been promoted and written about until the name and face became common knowledge and to an extent a self-fulfilling prophecy emerged even if the artist was already known. As. Hashim Sarkis, 2021 Venice Biennale Curator said in late 2021. “it is too soon to assess its impact, …where we are looking for images, and …. a spirit.” The assumption being that there will be an impact although how that impact will manifest itself is an unknown.
An assumption that such exposure will have an impact and potentially transport the artists into the stratosphere of art sales and subsequent fame is often short lived. Installation and performance art generally don’t fit the criteria for Sotheby auction. In the case pf Australia, still suffering Robert Hughes’ Tyranny of Distance, it helps not to be living in Australia, but that is another matter entirely.
The 2022 theme is entitled The Milk of Dreams, a magical world where life is constantly re-envisioned through the prism of the imagination. The curator chose the wording from a poem and the whole exhibit is being promoted as one of the principal concerns of artists and nations and yet even a cursory glance at the proposed exhibits and exhibitors leads me to believe that a whole other agenda is at play other than fantasy. Marco Fusinato, Australia, is recognised for his dark, energised works and a practice exploring the rhetoric of extremism in discourses such as radical politics; Stan Douglas of Canada exhibits work often in the first instance an examination of place entangled with the detail of specific geographical and political circumstance; Simone Leigh USA, explores historical and contemporary racism against black women in the United States and Lara Fluxa, Catalonia, has life on Earth originating in water and which makes up a part of her personal history. In fact, the idea of identity and identity politics seem to run through a number of the exhibits. How it all fits under the banner of Milk of Dreams is anyone’s guess but when more than a few pieces are overtly political it begs the question as to what national committees were after in their selections.
It’s interesting that the global nature of the Venice Biennale seeks to find common thematic ground while individual countries take the opportunity to pursue local issues or what are deemed to be the all-consuming concerns of the day. Politicising art has never really worked even with the efforts of the Italian Futurists, the Die Brucke cohort, the anti-war movement in the 70s and Goya with his gruesome depictions of man’s inhumanity to man. Picasso’s Guernica is rightly celebrated but it did nothing to stop Franco, WW2 or in fact any ‘police action’ carried out on behalf of the US government or grab for power in a hundred countries right up to yesterday when Burkino Fasa changed political complexion. As a medium for change or even a reflection of national interest, let along global issues such as climate change or the proliferation of plastic waste, Art has always been a failure. For the most part, the art of the 21st century, and I assume the 22nd,,has and will defy all attempts to control it and if the art history books are anything to go by, social and political art seldom makes the grade of that which is be remembered or lauded – other than Picasso, but then again he was a universally acclaimed genius who produced one monumental anti-war piece and a lot of portraits of the women in his life who either buckled under his will or packed their bags and left. He was more concerned with ritualised death anyway as he trudged from one bullfight to another in his later years.
Two ideas come out of all of this. Whatever artists make art about, it is personal. If two artists seemingly agree about approach, materials and validity, one will change direction or look for alternatives rather than be tarred with the same brush, as it were. There is nothing new about this. As far back as the Mexica invasion of Mesoamerica, the major settlement of Teotihuacan went out if its way to distinguish itself from all other Mesoamerican urbanisations. Where Maya and Zapotec art drew on a tradition of flowing curves, the sculpture of Teotihuacan shows human and humanoid figures that fit tightly into rectangular blocks. It is what art historians call schismogenesis – conscious cultural inversion. What it amounts to is that artists are a perverse lot, who will always do the opposite to their neighbours or cultural cousins. Biennales attempt to paper over the divides.
No matter what selection committees deem to be the representative art of the day to hang or be installed in a Biennale pavilion, there is no guarantee that they have ‘got it right’ or that the artist/exhibit will even be remembered once the exhibit is over let alone become a beacon of cultural representation – unless a book is written about it. What is more likely is that being hung as the representative artist will be forever emblematic of a time, a place and art thinking that seeks to draw artificial battle lines.
[1] Gardiner. K Australia at the Venice Biennale, Miegunyah Press 2021.