Another biennale is officially hitting the crowded art calendar – The Venice Biennale has announced its next edition! It will run from 23 April to 27 November 2022 (pre-opening on 20, 21, and 22 April). Titled “The Milk of Dreams” and curated by Cecilia Alemani, The 59th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia is based on a wide range of discussions with artists that have taken place over the last few years. Here’s the first part of our Guide To The Most Interesting Events In Venice 2022.
Polish Pavilion
“Re-enchanting the World”
Artist: Małgorzata Mirga-Tas
Curators: Wojciech Szymański, Joanna Warsza
Commissioner: Janusz Janowski (from 2022), Hanna Wróblewska (till 2021)
Organiser: Zachęta — National Gallery of Art
Location: Giardini
The exhibition is an attempt to broaden the Polish and European iconosphere and art history with representations of Roma culture. Referring to the title of this year’s Biennale Arte: Milk of Dreams, the artist created a magical world, constantly subjected to re-enchantment, offering a kind of temporary and adventurous asylum that will give hope and solace to the viewers. Reaching for images of crucial importance to the history of European art and visual culture, the artist ‘appropriates’ them and inscribes them with Polish-Roma identity and native historical experience. Her project for the Polish Pavilion is based on the idea of transnationality, cyclicality, and changeability of often appropriated meanings, proposing a new narrative describing the endless cultural migration of images and mutual influences between Roma, Polish and European cultures. The exhibition is curated by Wojciech Szymański and Joanna Warsza.
Estonian Pavilion
“Orchidelirium: An Appetite for Abundance”
Artists: Kristina Norman and Bita Razavi, based on the story and works of Emilie Rosalie Saal (1871-1954)
Curator: Corina Apostol
Commissioner: Maria Arusoo, Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA)
Location: Pavilion of the Netherlands, Giardini
For the exhibition in Estonia, Kristina Norman, and Bita Razavi, in close collaboration with curator Corina L. Apostol, will present a multi-layered ecocritical show “Orchidelirium. An Appetite for Abundance”.
Inspired by the Estonian writer, photographer, and topographer Andres Saal, who lived with his partner Emilie Rosalie Saal on the island of Java, (which was then part of the Dutch East Indies), the artists will create a space featuring Kristina Norman’s film trilogy and Bita Razavi’s performative spatial intervention. Imagining Orchidelirium, the orchid fever that swept Europe so long ago requires a strain of imagination. But behind the allure and beauty of tropical orchids lies a complex and dark history of colonial ecological exploitation with lasting repercussions. In a carefully crafted interplay between scientific, historical, and aesthetic aspects, the artists critically examine the landscapes of pre-independence Estonia and late colonial Indonesia, and the impact they have had on the environment to this day.
Slovenian Pavilion
Artist: Marko Jakše
Curator: Robert Simonišek
Commissioner: Aleš Vaupotič
Location: Arsenale
During La Biennale di Venezia Slovenia will be represented by Marko Jakše. Artist’s exhibition will include canvases from different periods of his artistic activity.
The artist has been causing a stir with his creative and imaginative works for more than three decades. Since the beginning of his artistic career, Jakše has devoted exclusively to the medium of painting. Through his distinctive figurative and landscape motifs, he has created a mysterious artistic universe where the oneiric and the real, the lyrical and the narrative, the archaic and the modern are intertwined. Jakše is a highly original and evocative artist who opens up the unconscious, the emotions, and the imagination with his alluring, warped images. Although some of his works contain clear allusions to past trends in art, he is inspired by the present and by who he is and what he feels. He sees his journey as a form of amusement, exploring spontaneity and remaining an eternal child. Jakše’s artistic expression is versatile, polyphonic, and cannot be reduced to isolated intellectual concepts.
Hungarian Pavilion
“After Dreams: I Dare to Defy the Damage”
Artist: Zsófia Keresztes
Curator: Mónika Zsikla
Commissioner: Julia Fabényi
Organizer: Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest
Location: Giardini
The Hungarian Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale will host a solo exhibition by Zsófia Keresztes, the first by a female artist since the posthumous exhibition in honour of Erzsébet Schaár in 1982 and the project developed by Hajnal Németh in 2011.
“Zsófia Keresztes is one of the outstanding representatives of the younger generation of Hungarian artists who have already achieved international success. In her work, she boldly crosses and at the same time combines the boundaries of disciplines and artistic styles. Treating the space of the pavilion as a single entity, her installation, which moves between architecture, sculpture, and applied art, is characterised by a female perspective, is concerned with self-knowledge and human relationships, and takes you on an inner journey through landscapes of the imagination”, the jury states.
Austrian Pavilion
“Invitation of the Soft Machine and Her Angry Body Parts”
Artists: Jakob Lena Knebl, Ashley Hans Scheirl
Curator: Karola Kraus
Commissioner: The Arts and Culture Division of the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport
Location: Giardini
Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl are the authors of the concept for the Austrian Pavilion. “Their works are characterized by manifold entanglements of art, performance, design, fashion, and architecture and draw attention to current discourses that are generating a lot of international interest,” says Karola Kraus, the curator of the Austrian Pavilion.
At least since the birth of modernism, artists have had a specific role to play in how art operates. These assignments of social roles are usually related to gender, sexual orientation, skin colour, or status.
Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl have organised their exhibition within the coordinate system of this construct, which uses both desired and enforced identities, challenging it and trying their own game by mixing systems and creating hybrids that deal with the identities of styles, media, materiality, and movements throughout the history of art and design. The artists do not want us to see their works as expressions of indoctrination, but more as joyful, sensual invitations to join their journey into utopian realms. Free of any sense of moral, instructive superiority, their works form three-dimensional, multimedia installations that fit perfectly into both the realities of everyday life and virtual space.
Deutscher Pavillon
Artist: Maria Eichhorn
Curator: Yilmaz Dziewior
Commissioner: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) on behalf of the Federal Foreign Office, Germany.
Location: Giardini
The German Pavilion at la Biennale di Venezia in 2022 will present works by artist Maria Eichhorn. The exhibition is curated by Yilmaz Dziewior. He has chosen an artist known worldwide for both her conceptual approach and her subtle sense of humour. Maria Eichhorn’s artistic projects are usually processual in nature and seek to highlight and rearrange existing social orders. Using her visually minimal gestures, spatial interventions, and process-based works, Eichhorn critically examines institutional power structures and political and economic connections.
The artist already attracted attention in 2002 with her work Maria Eichhorn Aktiengesellschaft [Maria Eichhorn Public Limited Company], which she realised at Documenta11 in Kassel. a public limited company with a special status that prohibited it from increasing its capital. By presenting foundation documents and the 50,000-Euro equity capital placed in a display case in a neat bundle of a hundred brand-new 500 Euro bills—, she made a striking commentary on the relationship between art and the economy.
In addition to her participation in documenta in Kassel in 2002 and in Athens and Kassel in 2017, Maria Eichhorn has participated several times in the Biennale di Venezia (2015, 2001, 1993), as well as in many other international biennials.
Belgian Pavilion
“The Nature of the Game”
Artist: Francis Alÿs
Curator: Hilde Teerlinck
Commissioner: Jan Jambon, Minister-President of the Government of Flanders and Flemish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Culture, ICT and Facility Management
Location: Giardini
In this year’s edition of La Biennale di Venezia, Francis Alÿs, in collaboration with the curator Hilde Teerlinck, will represent the Belgian Pavilion (Flanders). “The Nature of the Game” is an exhibition featuring a selection of films and a series of paintings. Most of the films shown are new productions.
Since 1999, during his many travels, Alÿs’ camera has captured children playing in public spaces. The act of playing is something completely natural, something we discover and learn intuitively during childhood. Like eating and sleeping, amusement is a basic human need. Children’s play should be understood as a creative relationship with the world in which they live, revealing a socio-political dimension.
Observing, investigating, and documenting human behaviour in urban life is a permanent feature of Alÿs’s work. His films record (in an ethnographic way) both the power of cultural tradition and the casual, free, and autonomous attitudes of children, even in the most conflictual situations. Alÿs uses his camera as a way of trying to understand the culture and the patterns by which people live.
French Pavilion
“Les rêves n’ont pas de titre / Dreams have no titles”
Artist: Zineb Sedira
Curators: Yasmina Reggad, Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath
Commissioners: Institut français, French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, French Ministry of Culture
Location: Giardini
The French Pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia will be represented by Zineb Sedira who has chosen the curatorial team composed of Yasmina Reggad, Sam Bardaouil, and Till Fellrath.
Zineb Sedira is a French-born Algerian. She has played a crucial role in broadening the discourse within contemporary art practices, examining alternative stories of colonialism and contested historical narratives. She is also addressing issues of collective memory and heritage in her work.
Since the beginning of her career, she has developed a polyphonic vocabulary that embraces autobiographical narrative, fiction, and documentary genres. In over fifteen years of her practice, Sedira has enriched the discussion around the concepts of modernism, modernity, and its manifestations in an inclusive manner. She has also developed an awareness of artistic expression and contemporary experience in North Africa. She originally found inspiration in exploring her identity as a woman with specific personal geography. From these autobiographical reflections, she gradually shifted her interest to more universal ideas of mobility, memory, and transmission.
Swiss Pavilion
“The Concert”
Artist: Latifa Echakhch, in collaboration with composer Alexandre Babel
Curator: Alexandre Babel, Francesco Stocchi
Commissioner: Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia (Madeleine Schuppli, Sandi Paucic, Rachele Giudici Legittimo)
Location: Giardini
The Swiss Pavilion will present an exhibition titled “The Concert” conceived by Latifa Echakhch, in collaboration with percussionist and composer Alexandre Babel and curator Francesco Stocchi.
Latifa Echakhch captivates those visiting the Swiss Pavilion with scenes that bring the cycle of life to light in a multi-layered and complex way. These are scenes of impermanence, of catharsis. Most of the materials used in the exhibition are themselves part of transformations, recycled from previous biennials.
Latifa Echakhch also enters into a dialogue with the building designed by Bruno Giacometti in 1951. The artist revisits its architectural programme and appropriates all its spaces, exploring their relationship with light and the various sounds that emerge from them.
The exhibition plays with harmonies and dissonances, with mixed feelings of anticipation, fulfilment, and disappearance. The sculptures, inspired by folk practices, are part of an orchestrated and ambient experience, a rhythmic and spatial proposal that allows viewers to experience a fuller perception of time and their own bodies. time and their own bodies.
Dutch Pavilion
“When the body says Yes”
Artist: melanie bonajo
Curators: Orlando Maaike Gouwenberg, Geir Haraldseth, Soraya Pol
Commissioner: Mondriaan Fund
Location: Chiesetta della Misericordia of Art Events, Cannaregio
melanie bonajo is the artist who will represent the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale in 2022. In the Dutch Pavilion bonajo will present a new video installation called ‘When the body says Yes’. For the upcoming edition, the Mondriaan Fund has decided to break with tradition and present the Dutch entry at a new location, the Chiesetta della Misericordia of Art Events, a deconsecrated 13th-century church in Cannaregio.
melanie bonajo (in lowercase, they / their) is a Dutch artist, filmmaker, certified sexologist bodyworker and, somatic sex coach. The new work that will be presented during the Biennale Arte 2022 is part of their ongoing research into the current status of intimacy in our increasingly alienated, commodity-driven world. For Bonajo, touch can be a powerful cure for the modern solitude epidemic. In collaboration with scenographer Théo Demans, bonajo is creating an engaging video installation that will draw visitors into a perspective-shifting environment. Stimulating visitors’ senses will help them reflect on the meaning of physical touch and intimacy in relation to their own bodies.
Nordic Pavilion – Sámi Pavilion
“The Sámi Pavilion”
Artists: Pauliina Feodoroff, Máret Ánne Sara, Anders Sunna
Curators: Liisa-Rávná Finbog, Beaska Niillas, Katya García-Antón
Commissioner: Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA)
Location: Giardini
The Nordic Pavilion at the Arte Biennale 2022 seeks to highlight the excellence of Sámi artists, as well as the international significance of their individual and collective stories.
The Sámi are indigenous to the Scandinavian Peninsula and a large part of the Kola Peninsula, which is today divided between Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Russia. Sápmi is the Sámi people’s own name for their homeland. The transformation of the Nordic Pavilion into the Sámi Pavilion is an act of indigenous sovereignty that emphasises the artists’ connection to their Sápmi homeland, an area that predates the concept of the Nordic region, and presents a pavilion that embraces all the lands and people of what was originally a region without borders. It is a symbolic reversal of colonial claims that intended to erase Sámi land and culture. Feodoroff, Sara, and Sunna will highlight the urgent situation many Sámi – and other indigenous peoples around the world -currently face regarding self-determination, deforestation, land, and water-governance. In particular, Sámi artists are engaged in the struggle to maintain reindeer herding and fishing, which are central to their existence. The artists reflect on these issues, drawing on Sámi ways of being and knowledge to create works of great power. This makes them unique in today’s art world.
United States Pavilion
“Simone Leigh: Sovereignty”
Artist: Simone Leigh
Curator: Eva Respini, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston
Commissioner: Jill Medvedow, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston
Location: Giardini
Simone Leigh will represent the United States at the Arte 2022 Biennale. For the American Pavilion, Leigh has created a new series of figurative bronze and ceramic sculptures that emphasize her commitment to highlighting the work and resilience of Black women throughout global history. Drawing on the artistic traditions of Africa and the African diaspora, Leigh employs a strategy she refers to as ‘the creolization of form’, bringing together different cultural languages linked by a history of colonization. In these works, Leigh weaves together references to nineteenth-century West African art, the material culture of the first Black Americans, and the colonial history of international exhibitions.
The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) has also launched a website dedicated to artist Simone Leigh and her exhibition at the forthcoming Venice Biennale, which features a short video of the artist at work by a visual creator Shaniqwa Jarvis. The video offers a brief glimpse behind-the-scenes as Leigh creates new artworks for the Biennale.
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Simone Leigh, 2021, © Simone Leigh, Courtesy the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery, Photo: Shaniqwa Jarvis -
Eva Respini, Courtesy of the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Photo: Liza Voll Photography -
Jill Medvedow, Courtesy of the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Photo: Liza Voll Photography
Australian Pavilion
“DESASTRES”
Artist: Marco Fusinato
Curator: Alexie Glass-Kantor
Commissioner: Australia Council for the Arts
Location: Giardini
Marco Fusinato will represent Australia at the Arte Biennale 2022. Fusinato is a contemporary noise musician whose work takes the form of installations, photographic reproductions, design, performance, and recordings. DESASTRES is the culmination of his interests in noise/experimental music, underground culture, mass media images, and art history. It is an experimental noise project that synchronizes sound with image and takes the form of a durational solo performance as an installation.
The artist will perform during the opening hours of the Biennale – for a total of 200 days. Fusinato will be performing live in the pavilion, using an electric guitar as a signal generator for mass amplification to improvise slabs of noise, saturated feedback, and dissonant intensities that will evoke a flood of images. The presentation will be the first live performance in the Australian pavilion, located in the historic Giardini della Biennale.
Canadian Pavilion
“2011 ≠ 1848”
Artist: Stan Douglas
Curator: Reid Shier
Commissioner: National Gallery of Canada
Location: Giardini and Magazzini del Sale n. 5
Stan Douglas will represent Canada at the Biennale Arte 2022. The artist will present a solo presentation of new video and photographic work across two venues, the Canada Pavilion in the Giardini and Magazzini del Sale No. 5 in Zattere.
Considered as one of Canada’s most acclaimed contemporary artists, Douglas, in his multidisciplinary practice includes film, photography, and more recently, theatre productions. He continually reimagines the mediums of photography, multi-channel film, and video installation. His practice is characterised by critical imagination, formal ingenuity, and a deep commitment to social research. His work often reflects on the dynamic potential inherent in historical landmarks, exploring the relationship between local history and generational social forces, both global and local.
Irish Pavilion
“Gather”
Artist: Niamh O’Malley
Curator: Temple Bar Gallery + Studios
Commissioner: Culture Ireland
Location: Arsenale
During the Arte 2022 Biennale, Irish Pavilion will present the exhibition “Gather” by Niamh O’Malley, curated by the Temple Bar Gallery + Studios Curatorial Team.
“Gather” begins in Niamh O’Malley’s workspace at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios (TBG+S) in Dublin, where stone, steel, wood, and glass are shaped, composed, and assembled. Giving shape and visibility to solidity is O’Malley’s particular compulsion, a quiet but physical response to uncertain times. She is interested in the negotiation between the surfaces of the world, how objects and spaces can speak, and how an exhibition can somehow anchor, contain and describe distance. O’Malley reminds us that at a time when we spend so much time in our heads, we are also, in an acute and collective way, in the world.
Finish Pavilion
“Close Watch”
Artist: Pilvi Takala
Curator: Christina Li Exhibitor: Pilvi Takala
Commissioner: Raija Koli, Frame Finland
Location: Giardini
“Close Watch” is a video installation by Pilvi Takala, which will have its premiere at the Biennale Arte 2022. Commissioned and produced by Frame, the exhibition is curated by Christina Li.
The multi-channel installation is based on Takala’s experiences in the private security industry, where she worked in secret as a security guard. The work focuses on a workshop she developed in reaction to problems encountered on the job during her six-month employment in one of Finland’s largest shopping centres. By working undercover, staging social situations, and infiltrating communities, Takala’s artistic practice reveals the often unspoken rules and norms in society. Exploring security as both a concept and an industry, the artist considers how it defines our public space and the behaviour tolerated within it.
Icelandic Pavilion
“Perpetual MOTION”
Artist: Sigurður Guðjónsson
Curator: Mónica Bello
Commissioner: Auður Jörundsdóttir, Icelandic Art Center
Location: Arsenale
Sigurður Guðjónsson will represent Iceland at the Venice Biennale in 2022. Sigurður is known for his powerful video works in which image, sound, and space create an organic entirety.
His exhibition career began at the turn of the century at a vibrant, artist-run experimental scene in Reykjavík, which promoted new art in temporary venues throughout the old city. His dark and hypnotically atmospheric videos immediately made him stand out and attracted attention.
Sigurður Guðjónsson uses the potential of time-based media to create works that rhythmically draw the viewer into a synaesthetic experience, combining seeing and hearing in a way that seems to expand the perceptual field and evoke sensations we have never felt before.
Ukrainian Pavilion
“The Fountain of Exhaustion. Acqua alta”
Artist: Pavlo Makov
Curators: Lizaveta German, Maria Lanko, Borys Filonenko
Commissioner: Kateryna Chuyeva, Deputy Minister for European Integration of the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine
Location: Arsenale
“Fountain of Exhaustion” by Pavlo Makov will represent Ukraine at the Biennale Arte 2022. The idea is that the 27-year-old concept will mean much more in times of climate change, particularly present in Venice, whose famous canals have been alternating between droughts and floods, the phenomenon known as “acqua alta.”
Fountain of Exhaustion will be a 12-tier pyramid of steel funnels with water flowing into the one on top. Each funnel splits in two, dividing the water between more funnels at each level. By the time it gets to the third tier, the flow slows to a trickle, and at the sixth tier, to a drip. At tier 12, it barely seeps through the last 12 funnels, into an awaiting pool.
“The display symbolizes exhaustion on many levels”, Makov says. “Besides the obvious – depletion of humanity’s resources and credit with the environment – it’s about psychological exhaustion due to social media abuse, the pandemic, and economic recession”.
Japanese Pavilion
“Dumb Type”
Artists: Dumb Type (Shiro Takatani, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Ken Furudate, Satoshi Hama, Ryo Shiraki, Marihiko Hara, Hiromasa Tomari, Takuya Minami, Yoko Takatani)
Commissioner: The Japan Foundation
Location: Giardini
At this year’s Biennale Arte, the Japanese Pavilion will be represented by Dumb Type. They are a group composed of artists with various backgrounds including visual arts, video, computer programming, music, and dance. Since its founding in 1984, Dumb Type has continued to explore the possibilities of collective collaboration through an array of distinctive projects. Without a designated director, the group’s creative practice is based on flat, fluid, non-hierarchic collaborations in which participating members change according to each project. The group’s multimedia art that transcends all forms of expression and is not limited to established genres of art, drama, and dance has been widely introduced both in Japan and overseas.
