BLACK STAR – GHANA PAVILION AT THE VENICE BIENNALE
Following its highly acclaimed debut at the 2019 Biennale, Ghana will present the exhibition Black Star—The Museum as Freedom for the Ghana Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition—la Biennale di Venezia in 2022. With the patronage of Ghana’s President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and curatorship by Nana Oforiatta Ayim, the featured artists are Na Chainkua Reindorf, Afroscope and Diego Araúja.
Titled after the Black Star that symbolises Ghana through its flag, national football team, and most important monument, it also became a symbol of the connection of Africa with its diasporas through Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line and his Back-to-Africa movement revived now in Ghana as Beyond the Return; as well as for Pan-Africanism and anti-colonialism with the symbol described as the “Lodestar of African Freedom.” The pavilion exhibition examines new constellations of this freedom across time, technology and borders. It includes large-scale installations by Na Chainkua Reindorf, Afroscope and Diego Araúja, in an exhibition designed by architect DK Osseo Asare, and curated by Nana Oforiatta Ayim, Director of ANO Institute of Arts & Knowledge in Accra and Director at Large of Ghana’s Museums and Cultural Heritage.
Na Chainkua Reindorf takes masquerade and secret society traditions that historically were largely male, and creates her own mythology of Mawu Nyonu, a fictional secret society made of seven women, at one with the elements around them. This notion of oneness is taken further by Afroscope’s work Ashe, which explores the spirit that runs through all the elements, using technology as a translator of the flow of life, as exemplified by water. The theme also underpins Diego Araúja’s work, A Congress of Salt, in which the Atlantic Ocean that served to separate those taken from the shores of West Africa to its diasporas, now acts as a unifier, the birthplace of a new creole.
Curator Nana Oforiatta Ayim said: “How do we dream into existence new narratives, languages, structures? Ghana in its 65th year still grapples with political, economic, cultural, social and knowledge systems not made of or for its contexts. Systems created within its communities over thousands of years were deemed inferior to ones termed ‘universal’ by dominant powers. As we outgrow and move beyond ill-fitting systems; new ones, not yet defined, that draw on rich histories, not with nostalgia but with discernment of hindsight and experience; are forming.”
Na Chainkua Reindorf is a mixed media artist and mythmaker. Her work, which ranges from large-scale tapestries to immersive sculptural installations, is an exploration of and an ode to the rich cultural history of West African textiles, focusing largely on the complexities and visual culture surrounding masquerades and ceremonial costumes.
Afroscope is a speculative artist and designer for whom art-making is an attempt to deconstruct normative reality and challenge popular tropes by imagining transcendental visual narratives that comprise otherworldly beings, speculative dreamscapes and peculiar forms.
Diego Araúja is an artist born in Salvador-BA, Brazil, where he lives and works as an artist, director, and writer. He has directed the Creole Time process since 2015, considering the ongoing traumatic experience of Afro-Diasporic peoples and their descendants
Related Topics
May interest you
UNTIL THE SONGS SPRING - MEXICO AT THE VENICE BIENNALE 2022
Under the curatorship of Catalina Lozano and Mauricio Marcin, this proposal offers a collective approach, from a decolonial perspective, reflecting on worldviews, technologies, territories, and the reconfiguration of gender subjectivities. The artists Mariana Castillo Deball, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, Fernando Palma Rodríguez and Santiago Borja Charles offer allegories to imagine a coexistence based on complex relationships of reciprocity and respect. To construct a paradigm that addresses the mystery of regenerative coexistence of the most heterogeneous cultures, and not that of the exclusion of other living beings, both human and non-human.
GERMAN PAVILION AT THE 59TH VENICE BIENNALE: A QUESTION ON PAVILIONS THEMSELVES
The German Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition—la Biennale di Venezia in 2022 will feature the artist Maria Eichhorn. By choosing Eichhorn, who was born in Bamberg in 1962 and lives in Berlin, the curator Yilmaz Dziewior has decided in favor of an internationally highly recognized artist known as much for her conceptual approach as for her subtle sense of humor. With her visually minimal gestures, spatial interventions, and process-based works, Eichhorn critically examines institutional power structures and political and economic interrelationships.
CHILE AT THE VENICE BIENNALE – “TURBA TOL” BY CAMILA MARAMBIO
The Chilean pavilion that will represent Chile at the upcoming 59th Venice Art Biennale will host the collective and interdisciplinary project Turba Tol, curated by Camila Marambio and with the participation of Ariel Bustamante, sound artist, Dominga Sotomayor, filmmaker, Carla Macchiavello, art historian and Alfredo Thiermann, architect. The management is in charge of Juan Pablo Vergara and also includes scientists, indigenous activists and other collaborators from the creative field.
PERU AT THE VENICE BIENNALE – “PEACE IS A CORROSIVE PROMISE” BY HERBERT RODRÍGUEZ
Herbert Rodríguez (Lima, 1959), artist from Herlitzka + Faria, will participate in the 59 International Art Exhibition in the Venice Biennale: The Milk of Dreams. The exhibition at the Peruvian pavilion La paz es una promesa corrosiva (Peace is a corrosive promise) gathers 30 works and a projection of handcrafted slides. Among the works, there will be pieces of agit-prop (a mixture of photomontage, collage, stencil, silkscreen, and painting) and his mural newspapers Arte – Vida (Art – Life) made in 1989.
MÓNICA HELLER FOR THE ARGENTINE PAVILION AT THE 2022 VENICE BIENNIAL
Heller's proposal has been selected from more than 30 preliminary projects presented in an open call through the Argentine Foreign Ministry and consists of a multi-channel 3D animation video installation. The curator of the exhibition is Alejo Ponce de León.
GERARDO GOLDWASSER: REPRESENTING URUGUAY AT THE VENICE BIENNALE
Goldwasser (Montevideo, 1961) will be representing Uruguay in the 59th Venice Biennale 2022 with his project Persona. Curated by Laura Malosetti Costa and Pablo Uribe, Persona disputes uniformity and disputes the idea itself of persona. Goldwasser's project was chosen by the National Visual Arts Commission in an open competition declared by the Uruguayan Ministry of Education and Culture. The Uruguay pavilion occupies a privileged spot in the Gardens of the Biennale, flanked by those of France and the United States.
BIENNALE DI VENEZIA – THE MILK OF DREAMS, BY CECILIA ALEMANI
The exhibition will include “gender non-conforming artists who are challenging the figure of man as centre of the universe”. The artistic director of the 2022 Venice Biennale, Cecilia Alemani, outlined her curatorial plans for the 59th International Art Exhibition, which opens this spring (23 April-27 November). Alemani revealed that the show, The Milk of Dreams, will include 213 artists from 58 countries with more than 180 artists participating for the first time.
IGNASI ABALLÍ EXHIBITS AT THE MEADOWS MUSEUM IN DALLAS
The Meadows Museum, SMU, presents an exhibition by the Spanish conceptual artist Ignasi Aballí (b. 1958), ahead of his solo presentation at the Spanish Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale.
AUSTRIAN PAIVILION AT THE VENICE BIENNALE
For the Austrian Pavilion in Venice in 2022, Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl have conceived stage-like installations, entitled Invitation of the Soft Machine and Her Angry Body Parts, in which they unfurl their entire artistic cosmos – from paintings, sculptures, textile works, photographs, text and video to a fashion collection and a publication in the form of a magazine. These “spaces of desire” upset conventional notions of museum presentations and subvert the hierarchies of art and design, of high and low.
FRANCIS ALŸS WILL REPRESENT BELGIUM AT THE VENICE BIENNALE
For the 59th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, the Belgian Pavilion (Flemish Community) has invited curator Hilde Teerlinck and artist Francis Alÿs to develop an exhibition project. For the Belgian Pavilion, Alÿs will present The Nature of the Game, an exhibition featuring a selection of films and a series of paintings. Almost all of the films will be new productions.
AUSTRALIA EXHIBITS FUSINATO’S “DESASTRES” AT THE VENICE BIENNALE
The Australia Council for the Arts has announced the first details of Marco Fusinato’s presentation at the Venice Biennale 2022, curated by Alexie Glass-Kantor and titled ‘DESASTRES’.
SPANISH PAVILION AT THE VENICE BIENNALE
Correction is the project presented by artist Ignasi Aballí (Barcelona, 1958) for the Pavilion of Spain at the 59th International Venice Biennale, curated by Bea Espejo. Aballí's proposal consists of two actions: a 1:1 scale architectural intervention of the pavilion and the publication of six guides.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ORIGIN WILL BE IMPORTED BY THE ORIGIN OF THE SUBSTANCE – ARGENTINE PAVILION AT THE VENICE BIENNALE
In this 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, the largest contemporary art event in the world, the artist selected to represent Argentina is Mónica Heller, who will show in the Argentine pavilion the video installation entitled The Origin of Substance Will Matter the Importance of Origin. The project, which has the curatorship of Alejo Ponce de León, was chosen among the 40 proposals that were presented in a public and open call.
CECILIA VICUÑA RECEIVES THE GOLDEN LION AT THE VENICE BIENNALE
Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña is a recipients of the Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement of the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia - The Milk of Dreams.
BETWEEN SUNRISE AND SUNSET - UNITED ARAB EMIRATES PAVILION AT THE VENICE BIENNALE
The National Pavilion UAE exhibitis Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim: Between Sunrise and Sunset at the Biennale Arte 2022 (Venice Biennale). Curated by Maya Allison, Executive Director of The New York University Abu Dhabi Art Gallery, the exhibition presents an installation of human-sized, abstract and organic sculptural forms.
THE “BIENNIAL WITHOUT PUBLIC” (2020) IN SANTA CRUZ AND AN OUTLINED PATH (PART 2)
If the São Paulo Biennial in Brazil once had what was called the “Biennial of the Void” (2008), it could be said, bridging the gap, that Santa Cruz de la Sierra involuntarily experienced the “Biennial without public” (2020).
