This year’s central exhibition was curated by [red]RALPH RUGOFF,[/red] the American-director of the Hayward Gallery in London. It was titled [red]“May You Live in Interesting Times.”[/red] The Awards Ceremony of the 58th International Art Exhibition took place on 11th May 2019, at Ca’ Giustinian, Venice.
It concentrated on the looming ambiguous times we are experiencing politically - controversial figures are in power- technologically and mediatically - fake news are confusing and invading - and finally physically as our minds’ architecture and gestures are changing being permanently in contact with virtuality.
Millennials, new ways of thinking, of presenting the Biennale itself, these ambiguous present times were both questioned and honored this year.
Ralph Rugoff shook the old rules: 79 artists and collectives many millennials and up-coming young artists were exposed. For the first time, the Arsenale and Giardini hosted separate exhibitions, with each selected artist presenting in both venues.
[red]The Golden Lion for Best National Participation went to LITHUANIA[/red] for the experimental and open-mindedness of the Pavilion.
The jury was impressed with the Brechtian opera as well as the Pavilion’s engagement with the city of Venice and its inhabitants. Sun & Sea (Marina) is the piece, made by artists Lina Lapelyte, Vaiva Grainyte and Rugile Barzdziukaite. The opera performance takes place on an artificial beach, where performers are leisurely sunbathing until they suddenly start singing about catastrophic ecological scenarios ! It is a critique of our societies consuming leisurely while destroying our planet.
This is the second successive time the prize has gone to a performance piece. In 2017, the winner, Anne Imhof at the German pavilion was rewarded for her “Faust.”
Lucia Pietroiusti, The Lithuanian pavilion’s curator, — who is curator of general ecology and live programs at the Serpentine Galleries in London — encourages museums to start thinking differently as the fusion between theater, music, literature and visual arts in “Sun & Sea” is “exactly the kind of interdisciplinary collaboration that resonates in the present time”. Contemporary Art is becoming more and more performative and performance itself is seen as more accessible to all, meaning also those who don’t have the cultural references required to understand most art installations.
[red]Other prizes were rewarded[/red]:
- The Special mention as National Participation was given to Belgium for “Mondo Cane,” a comic mannequin-based installation by the artists Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys. This installation questions social relations across Europe and how we can live close to each other and yet unaware of the other’s existence. The side rooms of this pavilion appear as a parallel world peopled by the marginalized. These two worlds exist in the same space, but they seem to be entirely unaware of one another.
- The Golden Lion for the Best Participant was awarded to Arthur Jafa for his 2019 film The White Album (venue: Central Pavilion, Giardini), which, in equal measure, is an essay, a poem that reflects upon the issue of race spreading the virtues of love.
- The Silver Lion for a Promising Young Participant was given to Haris Epaminonda for showing us that the personal and the historical can be compressed into a powerful yet loose web of multiple meanings.
[red]Two Special Mentions were awarded to the following participants[/red]:
- Teresa Margolles whose work focuses on Mexican women victimized by drug-related violence.
- Otobong Nkanga for her ongoing and inspired exploration across media into the politics of land, body and time.
- [red]The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement was awarded to Jimmie Durham[/red] ( see article on modem online) for his work on the ambiguity of our identities, which overall symbolizes this year’s main theme as Ralph Rugoff states it: « ambiguity is the aesthetic of our time ».
The Venice Biennale is ongoing till Nov. 24.
