THREE PAVILIONS AT BIENNALE 2024 THAT EXPLORE THEIR OWN COLONIAL PASTS
The title of the 60th International Art Exhibition of the Biennale di Venezia, "Stranieri Ovunque", refers, in part, to foreignness as the inherent nature of the subject. Understood in this way, the national pavilions of Spain, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom exhibit artistic proposals that develop the theme of colonialism and reconstruct histories, remedy ties between identity and territory, and explore the dramatic plurality of this potent historical axis. That said, this review does not intend to unveil or unpack the most unjust transcendental truths, but merely to reflect on the musings of others.
Located by the entrance of the Giardini, the Spanish pavilion Migrant Art Gallery exhibits the work of Spanish-Peruvian artist Sandra Gamarra, curated by Agustín Pérez Rubio. Her proposal reinterprets the visual history of Spanish colonialism to give rise to elusive narratives.
The way in which Gamarra intervenes romanticized images with critical text highlights the tragic irony of the scientific discourse on the relations between colonizer and indigenous, tradition and extractivism, exoticism and violence.
In this process, the commodification of nature is emphasized through rationalization, a favorite tool of the European Enlightenment in the 17th century. As a result, the Spanish pavilion offers a decolonizing perspective where the economic and anthropological terms that were once part of the imperialist apparatus are put in check. The proposal is overwhelming, profoundly beautiful and painful.
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Sandra Gamarra Heshiki - Tierra Virgen IV (Reverso del ríoMagdalena) – 2024 - Óxido de hierro y falso pan de plata sobre lienzo, 170 x 195 cm. Crédito fotográfico: Oak Taylor-Smith
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Sandra Gamarra Heshiki. Racismo ilustrado I (Pintura de castas ytrabajo reproductivo) 2024. Óleo y falso pan de oro sobre tela. 175 x 310 cm. Crédito fotográfico: Oak Taylor-Smith
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Altar de la naturaleza moribunda I (Dime qué custodias y te diré quién eres) Dying Nature Altarpiece I (Tell Me What You Guard and I'll Tell You Who You Are) 2024 Óleo y pan de oro sobre madera / Oil and gold leaf on wood Políptico / Polyptych 15 piezas / parts 300 x 800 cm
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Sandra Gamarra en el Jardín Migrante. Pabellón Español en la 60ª Exposición Internacional de Arte de la Biennale di Venezia 2024. Fotos por Oak Taylor Smith.
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Imágenes de instalación del Pabellón Español en la 60ª Exposición Internacional de Arte de la Biennale di Venezia 2024. Fotos por Oak Taylor Smith.
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Extinción II (Ilustración botánica con manos) Extinction II (Botanical Illustration with Hands) 2024 Óleo sobre papel facsímile de la publicación / Oil on paper facsimile of the publication Flora de la Real Expedición Botánica del Nuevo Reino de Granada (1783-1816) editado por / edited by Culturas Hispánicas, Madrid, 1989. Políptico / Polyptych 30 piezas / pieces 53 x 35 cm (sin marco / unframed) / 58 x 40 (con marco / framed) (c/u) (each)
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Racismo Ilustrado IV (A veces la cabezas pueden ser trofeos) Enlightened Racism IV (Sometimes Heads can be Trophies) 2024 ( ESTA ES LA VITRINA) Huchas de Domund y falsos ceramios precolombinos Domund Piggy Banks and Fake Pre-Columbian Ceramics 1960 – 2023 12 huchas de Domund / 12 Domund Piggy Banks Cerámica / Ceramic 12 x 12 x 17 cm. + falsos ceramios precolombinos Cerámica / Ceramic 12 x 12 x 17 cm. se añade caja con objetos de cerámica (miniaturas de legumbres de cerámica. 2 x 2x 1 cm. – 1 x 1 x 0,5 cm.) 15 x 15 x 10 cm Vitrina de la colección del / Showcase from the collection of Museo Casa de la Moneda, Madrid. Circa 1960. + Vitrina del museo de la moneda de pared 2.63 x 0.40 m, h / 183 m. Conformada por patas y base.
The Netherlands’ pavilion International Celebration of Blasphemy and the Sacred presents works and installations by the Congolese collective CATPC - Cercle d'Arts des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise, in collaboration with Renzo Martens and Hicham Khalidi. CATPC's project is exhibited at the same time at the Biennale and at the White Cube Museum in Lusanga, Democratic Republic of Congo. This museum, designed by the acclaimed architectural firm OMA, is located on a run-down and abandoned plantation that used to belong to Unilever and was called Leverville. White Cube offers real and economic opportunities for Congolese communities descended from slavery to regain possession of this land and repair the forest it used to be. This decolonizing objective, proposed in White Cube and exhibited in the Dutch pavilion, reverses the process of extractivist capitalism and materializes the possibility of ecological and spiritual coexistence between the place and its history.
The exhibited works are sculptures made with clay from Lusanga and coated with cocoa and palm oil in Amsterdam. Their very materiality seeks to transform the violence of exploitation into sensitivity and remedy. They embody stories of suffering and slaughter, but also of healing and intelligence; giving voice not to those who wrote history but to those who lived it.
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The International Celebration of Blasphemy and the Sacred, CATPC, Renzo Martens, Hicham Khalidi, 2024. Photo by Peter Tijhuis.
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The International Celebration of Blasphemy and the Sacred, CATPC, Renzo Martens, Hicham Khalidi, 2024. Photo by Peter Tijhuis.
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The International Celebration of Blasphemy and the Sacred, CATPC, Renzo Martens, Hicham Khalidi, 2024. Photo by Peter Tijhuis.
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The International Celebration of Blasphemy and the Sacred, CATPC, Renzo Martens, Hicham Khalidi, 2024. Photo by Mercedes Abella
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The International Celebration of Blasphemy and the Sacred, CATPC, Renzo Martens, Hicham Khalidi, 2024. Photo by Mercedes Abella
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The International Celebration of Blasphemy and the Sacred, CATPC, Renzo Martens, Hicham Khalidi, 2024. Photo by Mercedes Abella
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© Still from White Cube, Renzo Martens © Institute for Human Activities
Colonial discourse is weakly addressed in the British pavilion. Housed in its neoclassical building in the Giardini, the exhibition “Listening All Night To The Rain” by Sir John Akomfrah presents a cacophony of acoustics, echoes and reverberations that aim to navigate memory of migration and human drama. The irony of watering down these issues is surprisingly evident, and the assumed poetics that mean to “think the world anew” [1] tend for nebulosity. Listening is intended as “a form of activism” [2] but rather it can desensitize.
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© Listening All Night To The Rain, Canto I by John Akomfrah. Image by Jack Hems.
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© Listening All Night To The Rain, Canto I by John Akomfrah. Image by Jack Hems.
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© Listening All Night To The Rain, Canto I by John Akomfrah. Image by Jack Hems.
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Still from Listening All Night To The Rain by John Akomfrah, commissioned by the British Council. All artworks are courtesy of Lisson gallery and Smoking Dogs Films. Copyright: Smoking Dogs Films
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Still from Listening All Night To The Rain by John Akomfrah, commissioned by the British Council. All artworks are courtesy of Lisson gallery and Smoking Dogs Films. Copyright: Smoking Dogs Films
The video installations create a confusing, postmodern bricolage that include references to Rothko’s abstract expressionism, religious altarpieces, Jazz music, 11th century Chinese poetry, French acoustic epistemology, North American literary criticism, Scottish landscapes, London club culture as a representation of protest, archival images of Kenyan, Congolese and Nigerian uprisings against their colonial oppressors, intertwined with personal memories of British diaspora. The topics sail from aesthetic philosophies to ecoterrorism: unsubstantial, bitterly, entropy.
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Still from Listening All Night To The Rain by John Akomfrah, commissioned by the British Council. All artworks are courtesy of Lisson gallery and Smoking Dogs Films. Copyright: Smoking Dogs Films
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© Listening All Night To The Rain, Canto I by John Akomfrah. Image by Jack Hems.
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© Listening All Night To The Rain, Canto I by John Akomfrah. Image by Jack Hems.
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Still from Listening All Night To The Rain by John Akomfrah, commissioned by the British Council. All artworks are courtesy of Lisson gallery and Smoking Dogs Films. Copyright: Smoking Dogs Films
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Still from Listening All Night To The Rain by John Akomfrah, commissioned by the British Council. All artworks are courtesy of Lisson gallery and Smoking Dogs Films. Copyright: Smoking Dogs Films
This year's Biennale stood out for showcasing a huge number of migrant and indigenous artists, ignored by the canons and exhibited for the first time in a program of this magnitude. Adriano Pedrosa, in charge of the curatorship and thematic axis of Biennale 2024, is the first Latin American in this position.
[1] Tarini Malik, Shane Akeroyd Associate Curator for the British Pavilion. Curator’s Introduction for the “Listening All Night To The Rain” Exhibition Guide by the British Council.
[2] Ibid.
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