We continued our Biennale adventure on Monday. Finding the Arsenale was much more challenging than we had imagined it would be. It took us a while before we got in the vicinity. On the way, we stopped into the Georgia pavilion which was showing two video installations that weren’t exactly stellar. Once we had directions, we tried to find the Macedonia B (they had two) pavilion. We found the small cube on a quay. It was covered entirely with mirrors, which made for some fun photographs. It was, however, closed.
At the Arsenale, we wandered through the different art exhibits. I really liked how the first piece was practically in the dark. It was a series of golden threads which ran from the ceiling to a platform in the center of the room. They looked somewhat like beams of light or rays from the sun, but the room was almost completely dark. I thought this was a successful start to the exhibit because it forced the visitor to take himself out of Venice and enter this other world. Many of the pieces I liked most were ones which dealt with social issues. There was a series of watercolor paintings about the aftermath of the Balkan wars and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Another exhibit was an installation meant to represent a village in Africa. Many artists had chosen video installation and other multimedia pieces. There were very few paintings and entirely two-dimensional exhibitions. I also enjoyed a kiosk with canisters, each represnting a different commodity. When you lifted the lid, a short sound clip of an interview with a person working in that industry played.
One of the more humorous pieces was by Aleksandra Mir who had boxes of free postcards for people to take. All of them said “Venice,” but on closer inspection, it was obvious that none of the photographs were actually of Venice. Some were of London and other identifiable cities, but most were of vacation scenes like flamingoes and people water skiing. Another installation I liked was a dark room filled with little blinking lights. On closer inspection, each light was an electronic device: television, computer, air conditioning unit, etc. The space was meant to represent the modern home and our dependency on electronics.
The Arsenale ended in the Latin American pavilion, where the works weren’t that interesting. Then we entered the Chilean pavilion. This was the first year that Chile had its own space (Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela are the only other Latin American nations with their own pavilions). Chile chose to highlight artist Iván Navarro whose works included a video pieces and light installations. The video piece was done in New York City; it showed a man riding through the city on a bike with neon lights. Jess had actually seen some of his neon pieces at a museum in Massachusetts, but I had never heard of him. The final exhibition in the actual Arsenale building (there were more on the property) was the UAE pavilion. It was their first time at the Biennale and they chose to make their pavilion about their country. There was an accompanying audio guide which was quite funny. It pointed out how the Biennale had become really big in the art world and all the countries involved were playing along with the game. The UAE did not want to play along any long and stated that in their audio guide. Jess was bothered by this because their pavilion did not contain any actual art.
After this, we saw some chandeliers made out of bird seed. Then we went to the Italian pavilion which was mostly two-dimensional pieces (a lot of paintings), and not that interesting. There was an exhibit in the water. It was lifeboats, covered with orange tarps, with accompanying audio – people being rescued. The Chinese pavilion wasn’t that interesting, neither were the sculptures associated with it. I did, however, like the “ara pacis” which was depicted as a stone battering ram (two stones with a stone suspended in the middle that you could pull back and release to break down the castle door). Another series of sculptures was about people taking pictures: there was a pedestal that talked about a daughter being the best daughter in the world. Another one – meant for two people – had a saying about how the people don’t actually know each other, but are smiling and hugging anyway. In another part of the outdoor exhibits, we found a shack with rings suspended from the ceiling. People were trying to cross the room by moving from ring to ring: it was quite challenging, especially because mosquitoes infested the building. In on exhibit, another video installation, an artist put together a video where a man changed from a motorcycle to a horse and back to a man. After the outdoor mini-exhibits (one of which was a man-made swamp) we went into the Turkish pavilion which was a model of buildings other than the Twin Towers which had succumbed to terror attacks from the 1990s to 2008. Before I read the description I didn’t know why there was a random collection of buildings in this display. The first one I recognized was the Sarajevo library.
After seeing these exhibits, we went across some water (it’s Venice) to the rest of the Arsenale’s exhibits. The first we saw was Jan Fabre: From the Feet to the Brain. One room held a bunch of glass bones arranged in a rectangular prism. Another, much larger space, was a sculpture of a man digging a shovel into an enormous human head while the man was standing on top of the head, which was on its side. In another part of the exhibit, a sculpture of a man was laying on what wound up being the ceiling (we were looking down at the ceiling). The next exhibit we saw was about art in Abu Dhabi; it was called ADACH: Platform for Venice. The exhibit was mostly video pieces, with a small installation and a few drawings. It wasn’t great, but the Abu Dhabi culture ministry had paid for the boat which took us across the water, so they were granted exhibition space. The final exhibitions in the Arsenale were The Fear Society: Pabellón de la Urgencia and Unconditional Love. They were connected by a room of large wooden rings. Fear Society had a series of mannequins in the shape of a cupid arrow. The mannequins had “I heart NY” shirts on. Each shirt had something related to the economic crisis written on it. Next to the mannequins was a large heart made out of lipstick tubes. The Unconditional Love exhibit had a video shown on three screens. The actors were real people, but the background was a digitally constructed paradise. Just outside the Arsenale, we walked into the Hong Kong: Making (Perfect) World exhibit, but didn’t stay long because it wasn’t that interesting and we were way too tired. We left the Arsenale, exhausted, and walked back via the grocery store, where we stocked up on stuff for dinner. The grocery store near our hostel was almost always crowded with tourists and the lines were unbearably long.
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