VENICE – The Venice Biennale, a prestigious contemporary art exhibition, is embroiled in controversy as geopolitical tensions take center stage. This year’s event, commencing on Saturday, is marked by unprecedented chaos and contention. The absence of the coveted Golden Lions, due to the jury’s resignation in protest against the involvement of Israel and Russia, highlights the unrest. Meanwhile, vocal demonstrations are taking place outside their pavilions.
The jury’s protest specifically targets nations currently under scrutiny by the International Criminal Court for alleged human rights violations. However, some critics argue that the United States should have been subject to the same scrutiny. British artist Anish Kapoor expressed his frustration, referencing the ongoing “politics of hate and war” that have persisted for far too long.
In a nod to popular culture, attendees of the Giardini and Arsenale venues will have the opportunity to vote in a Eurovision-style format for the best national pavilion among 100 participants and the top participant in the main curated exhibition, “In Minor Keys.” The winners of this public vote will be announced on the event’s closing day, November 22.
For those exploring the exhibition, a compelling starting point is Koyo Kouoh’s ‘In Minor Keys.’
Visitors are immediately captivated by a striking red feathered sculpture adorned with beaded embroidery. This piece, inspired by New Orleans’ Black Masking culture—a tradition rooted in the heritage of enslaved Africans—embodies the exhibition’s emphasis on minority perspectives, offering a profound reflection on cultural and historical narratives.
A towering red feathered sculpture with beaded embroidery greets visitors to the main curated show. Rooted in New Orleans Black Masking culture born from practices brought by enslaved Africans, the costume-like sculpture signals the show’s focus on minority perspectives.
The first African woman chosen to curate the main Biennale exhibition, the late Koyo Kouoh assembled 110 artists and artistic groups under a title meant to spotlight the overlooked, and five co-curators carried on her legacy after her death a year ago.
“She was someone who thought about making spaces for everyone to shine and we see it in her exhibition, we see it with ourselves,” said co-curator Marie Helene Pereira.
Britain’s Lubaina Himid explores life as a newcomer
Lubaina Himid, a Turner Prize winner, explores what it is like to make a home in a new place in her exhibition titled “Predicting History: Testing Translation” for the British Pavilion, featuring brightly hued paintings of couples facing the dilemmas of newcomers.
In one, two architects are trying to decide where to build. “One of them is trying to decide, would we build a building here, that proves that we have contributed to the culture, and the other architect is saying ’No, no, no, no, no. Let’s build something that we can escape in tomorrow,” said Himid, who was born in Zanzibar and has spent more than 70 years in Great Britain.
The Vatican’s Mystic Garden
The Vatican is offering spiritual respite from the world’s turmoil in the Mystic Gardens of Discalced Carmelite order next to Venice’s main train station.
Participants walk among the vineyards and pass a pomegranate tree and beds of herbs, wearing headphones that pick up music by the 12th-Century abbess, mystic and composer, St. Hildegard of Bingen, reinterpreted by artists such as Brian Eno and Patti Smith.
“Music also helps us delve into ourselves and understand, to use a phrase by Hildegard, the symphony that God has placed in our lives,” said Rev. Ermanno Barucco, prior of the Carmelite order.
Austrian Pavilion uses effluent as an artistic medium
A naked woman hangs from a bell outside the Austrian Pavilion, a human clapper making the performance art by Florentina Holzinger one of the hottest appointments in the Giardini. Inside, a nude rider swirls around on a Jet Ski inside a tank — emblematic of Venice’s relegation as an over-touristed amusement park.
A naked woman breathes through a scuba mouthpiece in another huge tank filled with water that has been flushed from nearby toilets and filtered multiple times. The presentation is called “Seaworld Venice.”
Israel: a meditation on love and war
Inside Romanian-born artist Belu-Simion Fainaru’s installation, water drips from suspended tubes into a pool, stopping in cycles for just 42 seconds, representing divine creative power in Jewish mysticism. Locks hung around the pavilion, like those placed by lovers on bridges around Europe, are engraved with the commandment “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” in Hebrew, and the hopeful exhortation: “This too shall pass.”
“I am against boycott, I’m for dialogue, and that’s a political statement,” said Fainaru, who called the jury’s exclusion of Israel a form of discrimination.
Art as a daily practice in the Estonian Pavilion
Estonian artist Merike Estna will work throughout the Biennale on a huge wall painting inside a community center gymnasium that was once a church — the space’s layered history mirroring her practice of spilling paint to build deeply textured surfaces over time. The act of daily painting represents the undervalued quotidian work of women.
Curator Natalia Sielewicz likened it to “the everyday feminism of sustaining life, of sustaining our planet.”
