25.07.2024
Curator and art advisor Polina Strogonova shares her reflections on the history and genealogy of the Venice Biennale questioning its relevance, focusing on the 2024 edition Foreigners Everywhere curated by Adriano Pedrosa.
I still remember my first Venice Biennial. It was 2007, and two other major global art events collided: documenta 12 and the Skulptur Projekte in Münster. I was in the final stages of my studies and on the verge of deciding whether to pursue an institutional or commercial path in the art world, so I thought: why not try both and then specialize? I did and ended up having a gallery career for over 17 years.
Going to the Venice Biennale back then was a luxury for me, as it certainly seemed like a must-see event. It was Robert Storr’s edition and although I was not much concerned with painting, I was nonetheless highly impressed. I still remember wandering through the halls of the Central Pavilion in the Giardini, completely unaware of any commercial or political implications of this event, far from the glamor race during the VIP preview days.
This naïve view changed over the upcoming two editions, which I experienced from the perspective of an art gallery, coming to the preview, trying to attend as many cocktails and receptions as possible, becoming part of the VIP marathon and making strategic appointments to expand networking and client base. Do I remember much of the art? Not really. Do I remember what the curatorial theme was? Neither. Getting back, exhausted and quite unsatisfied after Bice Curiger’s edition in 2011 I started having my first doubts about the event structure as a whole. What was the Biennale really about? Do we need this? How is the market intertwined with diplomacy? Questions that have been asked before, but that were new to me and that stuck with me for a while. So, I deliberately decided not to return for more than 10 years, concluding that this type of large-scale, global exhibition format was somehow obsolete and of no interest to me.
Introducing an indigenous voice requires discourse, requires context. Without its local history, knowledge and cosmology, its aesthetics simply dissolve in folklore
Now, in 2024 and after a fair amount of experience in the artworld, I decided to return. Keeping those old questions and doubts in mind, and coming back as an independent agent, without any particular agenda, just visiting the Biennial trying to analyze whether or not my skepticism would prevail. I was particularly curious and excited this year, given Adriano Pedrosa’s curatorial background and his inclusive focus on “The Global South” (whatever that actually means), queer practices, the art of Indigenous people, the work of folk artists and the so called “outsider art”: categories that certainly gained discursive relevance on the international art arena and a trend status over the past years. Having moved to Mexico City since 2013, I was also coming back to the exhibition with a different cultural and geo-political perspective. I found myself confronted with what I thought was a rather simplistic title – Foreigners Everywhere – given the current state of worldwide politics.
I found myself incredibly confused and facing an absolute lack of coherent discourse, context or woven narrative, regarding the presentation of all those “under-represented practices” that Pedrosa was emphasizing on in this edition. Introducing an indigenous voice requires discourse, requires context. Without its local history, knowledge and cosmology, its aesthetics simply dissolve in folklore. Who will be able to properly “read” the practice and understand its value? How can these art works from entirely different cultural and political backgrounds dialogue with each other and any other predominant contemporary art “outcome”? Letting them collide in a shared space is not enough and most likely has an opposite effect. In fact, they seem “exposed” becoming strangers in a goldfish bowl, observed by a public who does not know what to judge: the artists and what they represent (with all their cultural, political and ideological background) or the art that they are making.
“Through this folklorization of artistic positions, the exhibition unwittingly denies identity any fluidity, while deigning to choose neither between opposing values, nor between the reclamation of traditionalism and the reinvention of sexual and political identities. Thus, consciously or not, “Foreigners Everywhere” celebrates a patrimonial regime of art, modeled in the absolute by traditional grammars.”1
Thinking that the mere exposure in a powerful institutionalized event such as the Biennial is enough and will correct some sort of canon would be rather shortsighted. Some of these names, who have not yet been hunted by international mega galleries, certainly will now be on their radar and will be catapulted into an economy that is entirely blind of any narrative or discourse.
I observed the predominance of painting and a rather conservative and flat museography within the curated sections of the Arsenale and the Central Pavilion with its Nucleo Storico divided in three sections: Portraits, Abstractions and the one, devoted to the worldwide Italian artistic diaspora in the 20th century (here, Lina Bo Bardi’s glass easel display is an exception to the otherwise monotonous, salon-like wall-based hang). I would go as far as to question the quality of in-depth research conducted when selecting artists for Portraits and Abstractions sections and supposedly unfolding the under-represented modernism of the Global South. Relying on figures that commercial galleries have discovered over the past couple of years (Etel Adnan, Eduardo Terrazas, Chaouki Choukini, Olga de Amaral and others), following an ongoing trend, explicitly adding artists from these contexts into the gallery programs is questionable. Again: no woven narrative, but a bricolage of imageries with no context and at times of very poor quality. With the words of JJ Charlesworth: “Who can judge?(…) It’s ethically good that everyone is represented, but what is there otherwise to say about the art? Who is it for, and who does it address?”2 In fact, who is the Biennale really for? Is this format still relevant? These questions demand an answer: we don’t want to fall into a habitus, rather, we want to examine existing models for the future to come.
Letting them collide in a shared space is not enough and most likely has an opposite effect. In fact, they seem “exposed” becoming strangers in a goldfish bowl, observed by a public who does not know what to judge: the artists and what they represent (with all their cultural, political and ideological background) or the art that they are making.
When dealing with such reflections, I usually like to go back in time and review how and why certain events came to life in the first place and how they have evolved throughout time. The Venice Biennale is the oldest Biennale worldwide that underwent several programmatic and structural changes throughout its existence. Launched in 1895 as the First International Art Exhibition of the City of Venice, the show of contemporary Italian and European art was used to attract tourism to a disused part of the city, the Giardini, to help revitalize the area.
In 1907 the first National Pavilion opened, representing Belgium. And soon enough, other –mainly European– countries followed. What started out as an eclectic Salon presentation, gave place to the Avant-Garde in the early 20s and transformed into thematic displays or representations of certain styles or monographic reviews in the 50s and 60s (after having experienced interruptions due to WWII). However, back then, the figure of a curator was still absent and programmatic decisions were made by the Biennale’s President. One of the most important concerns of the Biennale has always been the idea of surveying global contemporary art practices, which given the time around the beginning of last century and the tradition of the international exhibition made a lot of sense. The massive presentation of great numbers of works from different countries was the foundation of the show.
Certain strategic, economic and diplomatic aspects such as urban renewal, diplomatic relations and cultural tourism have always played a role behind the scenes. And the event of course has always been accompanied by criticism and at times protests ––most radically during the student movements in 1968, accusing the Biennale of being merely elitist and apolitical.
The Biennale continued growing, changing its institutional structure as well as programmatic vision and experienced a peak moment in 1974, when under the presidency of Carlo Ripa di Meana it abandoned the idea of the National Pavilions and the model of historical surveys and actively addressed contemporary political issues. Unfortunately, things returned to business as usual by 1978. It was until the 70s that the Biennale started having overall themes and since 1998, the Venice Biennale has been structured into two main components: an exhibition comprised of national pavilions, each with its own curator and project; and an international exhibition headed by a global curator and an overall theme. Yet, here we are, almost 130 years later, inhabiting an entirely different, totally globalized world, with a Biennial that somehow still seeks to be a survey of what is supposedly the most relevant in terms of contemporary art today (injected with all political, economic, diplomatic and art industry related interests). With biennially named mega-curators, who are trying their best to embrace topics that are simultaneously artistically, politically, conceptually, socially, culturally,ideologically relevant, and inclusive. National Pavilions are a structure which I not only consider inadequate for our times, but in their strange “patriotic” being, each is operating under entirely differing circumstances, budgets and locations, thus representing an explicit inequality. Maybe it is time to re-think this format and envision platforms which really make room for different voices, without the ambition of bringing and “exposing” as many as possible. But generating rather intimate encounters, where these voices can be heard, where they vibrate in their own bodies, entities and spaces and where there is enough time and space for proper discourse to provide a fruitful echo.
Notes
[1]Nicolas Bourriaud: Foreigners Everywhere at La Biennale di Venezia, 2024. May 2024, Spike Art Magazine.
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