The 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia will run from 11 May to 24 November 2019 at the Arsenale and the Giardini, as well as various venues across the city of Venice. This year’s Biennale is curated by Ralph Rugoff, Director of the Hayward Gallery, London. Rugoff chose the title “May You Live In Interesting Times” to address the “interesting times” we are living in today – times of uncertainty, crisis and turmoil like those invoked by an ancient Chinese curse mistakenly cited as the source of this phrase of English invention. President of La Biennale di Venezia states about the title:
The title of this Exhibition could be interpreted as a sort of curse where the expression “interesting times” evokes the idea of challenging or even “menacing” times, but it could also simply be an invitation to always see and consider the course of human events in their complexity, an invitation, thus, that appears to be particularly important in times when, too often, oversimplification seems to prevail, generated by conformism or fear. And I believe that an exhibition of art is worth our attention, first and foremost, if it intends to present us with art and artists as a decisive challenge to all oversimplifying attitudes.
The main exhibition at the Central Pavilion in the Giardini will include 79 international artists. In addition, there will be 91 national participations – with five first time participants including Algeria, Ghana, Madagascar, Malaysia and Pakistan – as well as 21 collateral events across the city. Rugoff has commented about this year’s Biennale:
May You Live in Interesting Times will no doubt include artworks that reflect upon precarious aspects of existence today, including different threats to key traditions, institutions and relationships of the “post-war order.” But let us acknowledge at the outset that art does not exercise its forces in the domain of politics. Art cannot stem the rise of nationalist movements and authoritarian governments in different parts of the world, for instance, nor can it alleviate the tragic fate of displaced peoples across the globe (whose numbers now represent almost one percent of the world’s entire population). But in an indirect fashion, perhaps art can be a kind of guide for how to live and think in ‘interesting times.’
Below is a list of who will be representing Asia-Pacific countries at this year’s Biennale.
National Pavilions
Australia
Multimedia artist Angelica Mesiti (b.1976), who works across video, performance and installation, will be presenting “Assembly”, a multi-screen installation engaging with sound, music, performance, choreography and the moving image. The artist says she uses these forms of expression to “explore the musical tropes of polyphony, cacophony, dissonance and harmony which, in the film installation I am creating, can be understood as metaphors for the range of dynamics within a democratic system”. Mesiti’s practice is characterised by large-scale video and sound works, and uses the cinematic language and performance to explore individual and collective stories. The installation at the Biennale continues on the artist’s “exploration of how society is shaped through communication and participation”, as Pavilion curator Juliana Engberg reveals. She continues:
In ASSEMBLY, non-verbal, performative and musical expressions coalesce into a dialogue between the many who gather to maintain and advance the spirit of democracy. Mesiti’s work challenges the rancour and hostile politics of today with a work that is nuanced, poetic and which represents the ideals of a growing and evolving society that is open and attentive to new voices, ideas, desires and beliefs.
Bangladesh
The Bangladesh Pavilion will be titled “Thirst”, commissioned by Liakat Ali Lucky, Director General of Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, and curated by Mokhlesur Rahman and Viviana Vannucci. The exhibition will include the work fo Bishwajit Goswami, Dilara Begum Jolly, Heidi Fosli, Nafis Ahmed Gazi, Franco Marrocco, Domenico Pellegrino, Preema Nazia Andaleeb, Ra Kajol and Uttam Kumar Karmaker. Details will be updated once the Biennale opens.
China
Titled “Re-睿” (“Re-Rui“), the China Pavilion is commissioned by China Arts and Entertainment Group Ltd. (CAEG), which has been involved in the organisation of the pavilion since its establishement in 2003. This year’s curator is Wu Hongliang, Vice President of Beijing Fine Art Academy, and the exhibition will include the work of Chen Qi, Fei Jun, He Xiangyu and Geng Xue. Details have yet to be officially released by international press, although a press conference was held on 26 March. Chen Qi will present a large-scale traditional woodblock print installation, while Fei Jun will “transplant” Chinese bridges over Venice canals thorugh a mobile application. Sculptor Geng Xue, the only woman artist in the show, explores her pregnancy experience and the universal themes of birth and death in a clay sculpture film. He Xiangyu, the youngest artist, shares his memories of living in Berlin in sculptures and installation.
‘Re’ is a prefix in many Western languages, which means ‘again’ or ‘return’. 睿 (rui) is a Chinese character with a similar sound, but meaning wisdom. Curator Wu Hongliang, talkign to CGTN, reveals about the concept behind the exhibition:
I want to touch the interesting part of the human world development through the exhibition. And we want to showcase our works in a comparatively Eastern and more accessible way. The China Pavilion’s theme is our reflection on the current situation and the future. We find that many Chinese artists have been working on the topic in recent years. China’s contemporary art scene has changed a lot. In the past, we focused more on those whole new mediums and critical topics. But we have turned to look back on art and the world.
India
Titled “Our time for a future caring”, the Indian Pavilion is spearheaded by the Ministry of Culture and co-organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). The exhibition is curated by Roobina Karode, Director & Chief Curator, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, the principal partner, and commissioned by the Director General, National Gallery of Modern Art. The exhibition will revisit the memory and philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, and the many ways he continues to inspire, provoke and challenge the public, intellectuals and artists. The pavilion will display the work of seven artists, including Nandalal Bose, Atul Dodiya, GR Iranna, Rummana Hussain, Jitish Kallat, Shakuntala Kulkarni and Ashim Purkayastha.
Modernist pioneer Bose will bring his suite of tempera posters Haripura Panels, depictions of India’s rural populations, commissioned by Gandhi in 1938. Also in the show will be Kallat’s video installation Covering Letter (2012), which features a letter sent from Gandhi to Hitler, projected onto fog. Purkayastha will delve into the overlooked historical threads that surround Gandhi. Dodiya probes Gandhi’s legacy as “an artist of non-violence”, while Iranna, Hussain and Kulkarni will expound on the leader’s principles of truth, tolerance and peaceful protest.
The show, part of the government’s celebratory programme “150 years of Gandhi”, marks the return of India to the Venice Biennale after an eight-year hiatus, and aims to bring attention to our shared futures. The exhibition weaves together artworks that
either emphasize a historical moment, in direct collaboration or association with Gandhi or stage imaginary encounters that resonate contemporary critical thinking, creating an opportunity for a renewed search and investigation into received notions of agency, action, and freedom. The exhibition elucidates the premise that Gandhi’s presence is far from being fixed in time and space. His ideals are difficult to ignore in an increasingly violent and intolerant world.
Indonesia
The Indonesian Creative Economy Agency and Yayasam Design + Art Indonesia will be presenting an exhibition at the Indonesian Pavilion at the Arsenale featuring Handiwirman Saputra and and Syagini Ratna Wulan. The exhibitions is curated by Asmudjo Jono Irianto and Yacobus Ari Respati, with Enin Supriyanto as Artistic Director. Handiwirman Saputraand is known for his installations of objects and found objects, while Syagini Ratna Wulan is best known for her minimal spatial interventions and objects. The collaborative exhibition titled “Reason and Negotiation Never Come Just Once” (“Akal tak Sekali Datang, Runding tak Sekali Tiba”) will include 400 lockers with objects of significance to Indonesian heritage and culture, a ferris wheel and a smoking room, providing an immersive experience akin to that of an amusement park. The installation will go beyond the fun effect, by examing and commenting on the practices of the Indonesian contemporary art world. Details will be updated once the Biennale opens.
Japan
The Japan Foundation will present “Cosmo-Eggs”, an exhibition featuring artist Motoyuki Shitamichi, composer Taro Yasuno, anthropologist and Associate Professor at Akita University of Art Toshiaki Ishikura and architect and Associate Professor at Tokyo Denki University Fuminori Nousaku. Curated by Hiroyuki Hattori, curator and Associate Professor at Akita University of Art, the exhibition will provide an experiential space to imagine and think about the fundamental issues of today, through a collaboration between specialists of different fields.
Central to the exhibition is Motoyuki Shitamichi’s Tsunami Boulder, an artwork centering around the “tsunami stones” that the artist came across when travelling in the Yaeyama Islands in Okinawa in 2015. He has been researching and photographing these natural rocks for years, for their significance as memories of distaster, as well as for their role in local religious beliefs and elements of mythology and folklore. The stones, shaped like meteorites or giant eggs, have also become colonies for migratory birds and homes for insects, creating unique landscapes merging nature and culture. Comparing the stones and their formations with public monuments and squares, and collaborating with individuals from diverse backgrounds, the artist creates various physical experiences, mixing sound and space in a unique visual environment.
Kiribati
The Kiribati Pavilion, titled “Pacific Time – Time Flies” (“Ana tai te Betebeke – E biribiri te tai” in Kiribati Language), is curated by Kautu Tabaka and Nina Tepes, and coordinated by Institute ERGO SUM, Institute for Contemporary Art and Culture. The exhibition brings together the work of 29 artists of different generations working in various media, including video, photography, interactive animation, performance, ready-made art and installation. The pavilion reflects the endangered existence of the island country of Kiribati and the time we live in. The Republic of Kiribati comprises 33 atolls in the Pacific Ocean, and is among its many island countries threatened by rising sea levels due to climate change. The concept behind the exhibition references Plato, who claimed that forms and ideas are permanent, as opposed to the impermanent nature of our world and objects within it. This idea invites viewers to reflect upon the pressing climate issue.
Kaeka Michael Betero uses photography to represent the threat to homes and inhabitants. Through dance, the Kairaken Betio Group communicate their passion for life and tradition, giving a glimpse into what could be lost. Daniela Danica Tepes’s interactive installation features a room in a house, where the threat of inundation is ever present. The artworks presented use sound, colour, light, space and material to discuss the issue of climate change, and serve as a reflection between the artwork, human presence and space.
Korea
The Korean Pavilion is titled “History Has Failed Us, but No Matter” and will feature siren eun young jung, Jane Jin Kaisen and Hwayeon Nam. The title of the exhibition comes from the first sentence of Min Jin Lee’s novel PACHINKO (2017), an account of Zainichi Korean diaspora and a dynamic portrayal of women positioned as the subaltern in the turmoil of the 20th century. Commissioned by Arts Council Korea and curated by Hyunjin Kim, co-curator of the 7th Gwangju Biennale in 2008, this year’s exhibition presents three women artists approaching and reflecting on notions of history, the modernization of Korea and East Asia, and the present through the lens of gender diversity and a specific gender consciousness.
Over the last decade, siren eun young jung has worked on her research-based production on yeoseong gukgeuk, a fast waning genre of Korean traditional theatre that features only women actors. A Performing by Flash, Afterimage, Velocity and Noise documents second generation gukgeuk actor Lee Deung Woo (aka Lee Ok Chun), and also includes four other contemporary queer performers – a transgender musician, a disabled woman performer/director, an openly lesbian actor and a dragking performer. Jane Jin Kaisen’s new film Community of Parting interprets the ancient Korean myth of Bari, in which a daughter sacrifices herself for her parents and ultimately becomes a god mediating between life and death. The artist’s work is inspired by her own diasporic experience and awareness and resonates with the contemporary battle against gender discrimination as well as women diasporic experiences caused by war, nationalism, ideological conflicts, rapid modernization with patriarchic oppression in East Asia.
Finally, Hwayeon Nam experiments with archives to investigate how human desire can amplify certain myths and values in today’s society. Her new video Dancer from the Peninsula uses the fragmented archive of legendary but controversial choreographer and modern dancer Choi Seung-hee, who lived thorugh many tumultous events of the 20th century, to sketch a portrait of a woman artist’s inspirations going against the current and fighting against prevailing ideologies. The press release further reveals about the upcoming show:
The various narratives presented by these three artists weave formally complex compositions of mesmerizing sound, color, lights, rhythm and organically curve-shaped architectural installations, alongside alluring movements of the plural body to vigorously explore the heterogeneous narratives of the history of East Asian modernization. The exhibition thus presents the veiled, the forgotten, the abandoned, the condemned, and the oppressed, bringing these voices into the spotlight.
Lim Wei-Ling. Image courtesy Wei-Ling Gallery. Ivan Lam. © Marcus Wong H.H. Lim. © Viviana Guadagno Zulkilfi Yusoff. © Roszila Abd Rahman Anurendra Jegadeva. © SC Shekar
Malaysia
2019 marks the first time Malaysia participates with an official pavilion in the Biennale. The exhibition is titled “Holding Up a Mirror”, and is commissioned by Professor Dato’ Dr. Mohamed Najib Dawa, Director General of Balai Seni Negara (National Art Gallery of Malaysia) and the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture of Malaysia. Curator Lim Wei-Ling Esme, Founder of Wei-Ling Gallery in Kuala Lumpur, will bring together works by Anurendra Jegadeva, H.H. Lim, Ivan Lam and Zulkifli Yusoff. The inaugural pavilion provides a platform to showcase the development of the country’s contemporary art practices.
Anurendra Jegadeva, MA-NA-VA-REH, 2013, painted altar with painted components, light and sound, 246 x 148 x 80 cm.Image courtesy the artist. Ivan Lam, COMA 38/500, 2013, vending machine, 38 individual artworks in 500 Perspex boxes, aluminium etched plates, vinyl decals, 183 x 122 x 79 cm. Image courtesy the artist.
During the press conference for the announcement of the pavilion, the curator set the context of Malaysia’s current sociopolitical climate, a time when the country has recently opened a new chapter in its history. Bringing about an unprecedented change in a historic national election, veteran politician Mahathir Mohamad has risen as Prime Minister, paving the way for the restoration of a genuine democracy. In this context, in a country with a richly diverse multiracial, multi-ethnic and multicultural population, Wei-Ling Lim sets the pavilion exhibition as
a discourse around the concept of identity within the larger context of society at a time of immense political, social and economic change. “Holding Up a Mirror” takes as its starting point the concept of national identity as the space where the personal and the public intersect, where myth and history collide, where national and international perspectives are constructed.
The four artists in the exhibition conduct an enquiry around the self, within the wider framework of the collective, demonstrating how indentity is heterogenous and in constant flux. Personal narratives are woven into “a shared fabric of public consciousness that is at once diverse and unified”. Through painting, video, sound and installation, the artists explore the concept of identity, while discussing issues of alterity, cultural hegemony, patriarchy and globalisation.
Curator Wei-Ling Lim expands about the Malaysian identity and the exhibition:
To grow up in Malaysia is to become acquainted with different cultures and multiple histories. The construction of the Malaysian identity comes through a process of narration that hovers in-between the past and the present, often extending across different geographies to recount stories of diaspora, migration and integration. One needs to look no further than the four featured Malaysian artists whose backgrounds reflect the diverse and complex narrative of Malaysia. While each artist is Malaysian, their diverse ethnic, religious and cultural roots illuminate the many histories embedded in the Malaysian national mosaic.
Mongolia
The Mongolian Contemporary Art Support Association (MCASA) is collaborating with the Ministry of Education, Culture, Science and Sports of Mongolia to present Mongolia’s third participation at the Venice Biennale. Curated by Gantuya Badamgarav, the Mongolia Pavilion will feature Los Angeles-based Mongolian artist Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar (Jantsa), and an interactive sound performance with throat singers, some from the National Philharmonic Orchestra, accompanied by famous German artist Carsten Nicolai, known as Alva Noto. The selected Mongolian throat singers include Ashit Nergui, Damdin Khadkhuu, Undarmaa Altangerel, Davaasuren Damjin, Bayarjargal Chimedtseren and Khosbayar Bayarsaikhan. The project was developed from Mongolia’s peculiar throat singing and long song traditions, part of the country’s centuries old intangible heritage and now registered as such by UNESCO. Practiced by Mongolian nomads for centuries, these traditions were used to communicate with the inner self as well as with nature.
The cross-disciplinary project for the Venice pavilion, titled “A Temporality”, transforms this singing tradition into contemporary form as experimental sound art and interactive sound performance. The project stems from the curator’s ambition to transform ancient mediums of oral expression into contemporary form, by inviting Jantsa to create sculptural installations that would interact with the space of the old Venetian palace where the pavilion is located. Jantsa has been interested in researching Mongolian tales, riddles and proverbs, as well as his ancestral mindsets. He investigates transformations of socially constructed taboos, rituals, superstitions and habits, ultimately trying to create a dialogue between the past and present. The installation in Venice will provide “a contemporary environment, where artists can interact with physical objects and spaces and perform emitting various sounds using techniques of traditional singing”.
New Zealand
New Zealand artist Dane Mitchell is representing his country with a multimedia installation that will spread across the city of Venice, beyond the confines of the pavilion’s spaces. The pavilion is presented by The Arts Council of Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa, and curated by Dr Zara Stanhope, Curatorial Manager, Asian and Pacific Art at Australia’s Queensland Art Gallery|Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), and Mexico-based project curator Chris Sharp. Post Hoc developed from the artist’s ongoing concerns with physical reality in its intersection with the intangible and visible manifestations of other dimensions. It also continues on his exploration of our understanding of the material world, and his investigations into experiences of systems of knowledge or belief. The title Post Hoc literally means ‘after this’, and comes from the Latin phrase ‘post hoc ergo propter hoc’, which suggests caution in assuming a logical relationship between occurrences. In the same way, the artist’s work aims to “to decouple causality between the context of extinction and the vanished ‘past things’, leaving aside responsibility or judgement for cause”, as the press release explains.
The artwork, which will permeate the city of Venice, will symbolically revive an archive of vanished, extinct and defunct phenomena, through audible material propagated via industrially produced cell-phone stealth towers, designed to resemble trees, installed by the artist in public sites around the city. An echo free chamber in the Palazzina Cononica, the former headquarters of exhibition partner Istituto di Scienze Marine (CNR-ISMAR), will be the origin of the automated broadcast, which will be composed of over 300 individually researched lists of “defunct phenomena”, including lists of known black holes, disappeared sounds and extinct birds, former national anthems, and more. Such lists will also take tangible textual form in the Palazzina’s emptied historic library, printed on rolls of paper in sync with the transmissions. Five sites for the sonic installation have been announced: IUVAV University of Venice, Ospedale Civile, Palazzina Canonica, where the New Zealand Pavilion is located, North Arsenale and Sant’Elena Gardens.
The installation intends to provoke a range of emotions, from wonder and amusement to melancholy in comprehending the extent of each loss. The press release explains further:
… the lists of the vanished and invisible that number in the millions undoubtedly invite curiosity and conjecture among its audience to consider our relationship and responsibility to this myriad of things that are no more. Post hoc provides a relevant and timely intersection with topical global concerns, such as climate change, depletion of resources and technological obsolescence. Generated in the mode of archival research, the lists are ultimately limited by the accuracy of historical records and the political and subjective nature of truth and encyclopedic knowledge. In indexing this colossal amount of information, the exhibition provokes a larger question about confidence in Western epistemologies and belief systems, highlighting the impossibility of collating, storing and possessing all the knowledge in the world — a swansong to the impossible ideals of The Enlightenment, in the age of the internet.
Pakistan
Pakistan is participating with a national pavilion for the first time this year. Naiza Khan (b. 1968) will representing her country with an exhibition titled “Manora Field Notes”, curated by Zahra Khan, Director of Foundation Art Divvy, which is co-presenting the event with The Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA). The multidisciplinary artist will present a project based on her research on the transformations of sites such as the expanding Karachi harbour and Manora Island, looking at the dimensions of embodiment, ecology and optics. Through research, documentation and mapping-based investigation, Khan examines how the reshaping of Manora Island reflects wider changes in the Global South.
Over the last decade, Khan has travelled to Manora Island, part of a small archipelago off the coast of the Karachi harbour, traversing it on foot, and documenting its material culture, public space and maritime past. The artist has thus witnessed the slow erasure of the island’s history and ecology, and recorded it in her “Field Notes”, an archive of images, objects and observations relating to different facets of the island’s life. These include historic myth, conversations with local communities and architectural phenomena such as ruins and construction sites. Three interconnected spaces in the pavilion will provide an immersive experience and in-depth look at geographies and shared histories. Quoted in the press release, Khan comments:
Manora Field Notes, and the expansive research I have done over the years, is in some ways a homage to the island. At the same time, it moves through the materiality of that space, inviting questions about labour and production, optics and erasure and frictions between old and new infrastructures.
Philippines
The Philippine Pavilion is titled “Island Weather”, and will feature the work of Filipino artist Mark Justiniani. The immersive, site-specific installation is one of several collaborations between the artist and curator Tessa Maria Guazon. Mark Justiniani’s art practice reflects and expands his involvement with activist groups and artist initiatives in the 1980s and 90s, including Abay (Artista ng Bayan) and the collective Sanggawa (1994). His work is informed by his long-standing interest in vision and optics, and the structures of space and time. His art has evolved from social realism and magical realism into multimedia configurations that seek to explore the nature of perception. As a press release explains,
“Island Weather” explores local histories and a vernacular understanding of vision. It simultaneously evokes atmosphere and geography. Islands can be origin and refuge, and are fertile sites for invention and imagination. The art project references structures across the archipelago. These represent looking out to the world, the rise and fall of fortunes, the consolidation of power, and the mystical nature of islands. Island Weather ultimately asks about our manner of seeing and the way we perceive our truths.
Singapore
Commissioned by the National Arts Council and curated by Michelle Ho, the Singaporean Pavilion is titled “Music for Everyone: Variations on a Theme” and will feature the work of Song-Ming Ang. The Singaporean artist examines the social aspects of sound and music, creating work that merges visual art, experimental music and popular culture, and utilises diverse media, from video and performance to installation and participatory art. The multidisciplinary presentation in Venice will comprise film, digital prints, sculptures and banners, in an exploration of the ways people relate to music, on a personal and societal level, and how music can affect a sense of agency. The exhibition references a series of concerts – titled Music for Everyone – organised the Ministry of Culture of Singapore in the 1970s to promote Western classical music and to foster a sense of national identity.
Departing from the concept of ‘music for everyone’, the works in this show draw on experimental music and conceptual art to show that art can be created by anyone using simple ideas and techniques, this countering the commonly held notion of the arts. The centrepiece, a multi-channel film installation entitled Recorder Rewrite, featuresthe recorder, a musical instrument that has been part of Singapore’s music education curriculum since the 1970s. The film was shot at the Singapore Conference Hall, a cultural landmark of modern Singapore, which was an original venue of the Music for Everyone concerts. In the video, children from diverse cultural and musical backgrounds perform a composition of their own, following a workshop on improvisation exercises and unconventional uses of the recorder. In addition, there will be sculptures made with the recorders featured in the video, as well as collages of musical manuscripts, and fabric banners and watercolours on paper recreating original posters of the 1970s concerts. Quoted in the press release, the artist says about the work:
Apart from the cool, 70’s aesthetic of the original concert posters, I was most intrigued by what could be gleaned from the programmes and performers, and how it reflected the state’s agenda in terms of nation-building and foreign policy. Even the venues, ticket prices and sponsors form a charming snapshot of Singapore at that point of time.
Thailand
With the title “The Revolving World”, the Thailand Pavilion will feature the work of Somsak Chowtadapong, Panya Vijinthanasarn and Krit Ngamsom. The exhibition is commissioned by Vimolluck Chuchat, Office of Contemporary Art and Culture, Ministry of Culture, Thailand, and curated by Tawatchai Somkong. Details will be updated once the Biennale opens.
Shirley Tse. Image courtesy the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority. Guest Curator Christina Li. Photo: Michael CW Chiu.
Collateral Events
Hong Kong
Hong Kong’s collateral exhibition is curated by Christina Li, with Consulting Curator Doryun Chong, and co-organised by M+ and the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, and will present the work of Hong Kong-born, Los Angeles-based artist Shirley Tse. Titled “Stakeholders”, the artist’s new site-specific body of work will respond to the particularity of the space situated right in front of the Arsenale’s entrance. The presentation will reflect on how people can coexist peacefully in tumultuous times, as well as her inspirations of plasticity. Tse will use sculpture as a model of multi-dimensional thinking and negotiation. The works, while guiding the viewing experience of visitors, will explore the ideas of “horizontality” and “verticality”, drawing attention to the structure of the space, its subterranean location and the adjacent courtyard.
Two large-scale pieces – Negotiated Differences and Playcourt – translate her thought process into a physical form. The first adopts the rhizome’s structure, forming an installation of 3D-printed joints and hand-turned wooden forms spreading throughout the gallery space like the roots of plants. Playcourt, made of sculptural amalgams of equipment and anthropomorphic forms, occupies the courtyard, transforming it into a badminton court, emphasising the negotiation between people and space that is a fundamental component of play.
Tse has created the works using a diverse range of materials, including wood, plastic and copper. Her sculptures reference everyday objects, while also merging handicraft, mechanical and digital methods of production. Tse is known for her artistic practice as well as her longstanding educational commitment, as Doryun Chong, Deputy Director and Chief Curator of M+ points out. The exhibition curator comments that the event will be “the perfect opportunity to showcase the geographical reach of Hong Kong contemporary art beyond the city’s borders to an international audience, and to re-introduce Tse’s work to the Hong Kong public”.
Macao
The Macao Museum of Art will present “Heidi Lau: Apparition”. The New York-based artist creates ceramic works that are modelled after tokens of remembrance, such as ritual objects, funerary monuments and fossilised creatures. As her website profile explains, she “engages in the making of minor history, the recreation of that which has been lost to time and man”. Through her sculptural works, she shapes materialisations of the invisible and the archaic, making collections of symbolic zoomorphic and organic forms or “ruins”, by constructing, deconstructing and recomposing them by hand. Her profile goes on to reveal:
In the process, she reenacts the non-linearity and materiality of the past, molding a tactile connection to the disappearing, impossible identity of home: Taoist mythology, folk superstitions, and Macau’s colonial history provide essential source material for her exploration of transcendental homelessness, displacement, and nostalgia as the condition of contemporary existence.
Curated by Macao curator Sio Man Lam, “Apparition” tackles “the visibility/invisibility of Macao”, which has “become a source of anxiety in the cultural identity and artistic creation of the people in Macao”. Supporting her statement, the curator cites a 2018 book by cultural critic Chin Pang Lei, Invisible Macau: The Ignored City and Culture, which argues that Macao has been leading “an invisible existence”. Lam thus proposes an exhibition that addresses the identity of Macao, “to make an invisible Macao visible without creating further invisibilities”, while responding to this year’s Venice Biennale theme. The exhibition responds to the latter, which according to Lam implies that “we are living in a time of planetary uncertainty, crisis and anxiety”, by offering an alternative imagination of Macao.
Lam expands about Heidi Lau’s solo presentation:
Claiming to depict Macao in a state of manifestation, the exhibition contextualises many over-simplified and easily digestible impressions of Macao to reveal the complexities of its cultural identity. In these works, the creation myths of the goddess Nüwo bear testimony to long-standing local beliefs and the history of folk life. An ancestral home, filled with statues of Buddha and deities that appear frozen in time, evokes Macao people’s personal and collective memories that have been neglected and forgotten. The stunning extravagance of casinos would overthrow the tyranny of modernist aesthetics over taste, calling for postmodernist deconstruction, desire, and fantasy. The former Recreation Garden (today called Lou Lim Ieoc Garden) with its nine-turning zigzag bridge signifies the tangled relations between Macao and the gaming industry.
South Australia
The installation “Living Rocks: A Fragment of the Universe” at Magazzini del Sale is curated by Dr Lisa Slade and presented by Art Gallery of South Australia, where she is Assistant Director. The installation is a South Australian collaboration by artists James Darling and Lesley Forwood, in collaboration with Jumpgate VR, composer Paul Stanhope and the Australian String Quartet. The show addresses the question: what was our planet three billion years ago? The historic stone salt storehouse, the location of the installation, will feature a large pool of water, from which thrombolites emerge. Such living rocks have been made by the artists using the roots of an arid land eucalypt. Living Rocks was inspired by a lake containing rare, rock-like thrombolites, rock-like microbial structures that grow in shallow pools and release oxygen. They were the only living organisms on earth for three billion years and created the beginnings of the atmosphere of our planet.
Living Rocks merges scultpure, moving image and sound. Surrounding the pool are moving images produced in collaboration with Jumpgate VR, accompanied by String Quartet No 2 composed by Paul Stanhope and performed by the Australian String Quartet. The work was first shown at Hugo Michell Gallery in Adelaide, where the artists have shown their work since 2010. Artist James Darling explains that the installation “connects the present day to the beginning of life. It is a memory of our origin and a prophesy of our future”.
Taiwan
Taiwan will return to Palazzo delle Prigioni with “3x3x6” , a project by Shu Lea Cheang, curated by Paul B. Preciado and presented by Taipei Fine Arts Museum. The multimedia research project continues on the work developed by the artist over the past three decades, and will include images, installations and computer programming, in which past and present, virtual and real worlds converge. The artist grew up in Taiwan and developed her artistic practice in the United States and Europe. Her multicultural life is reflected in her work, which puts into dialogue Western and Eastern contemporary approaches to the body, desire, affect, and technology. Cheang is recognised as an Internet art pioneer, who explores the changing relationships between technology and living bodies in the age of late capitalism and globalisation, and its impact on body politics. Drawing from feminist and queer cultures, she utilises cutting-edge digital/electronic technologies and computer programmes to create performative artworks online and offline, including films, installations, interactive interfaces and live performances. Her works are “a meditation on the power of images and fictions to undo normative representations of gender, sexuality, and race”.
For the immersive installation at the Pavilion, Chean takes as starting point the panopticon interface she created in Brandon (1998–99), the first Internet art commissioned and collected by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The artist will transform the exhibition space into a hi-tech surveillance territory infused with fictional and real data collected from history as well as live interactions. Three image sources for the installation projection, including the images of individual viewers on-site (with their consent) and their selfies taken with a smartphone application, will be mixed using computer algorithms. A computer programme will then hack these real images and reprogramme them into transgender and cross-racial digital images that resist surveillance networks. 3x3x6 reflects on different technologies of confinement and control, from physical incarceration to omnipresent surveillance systems in contemporary society.
Cheang’s work also includes ten fictional transpunk videos in sci-fi and abstract image format, exploring characters such as Giacomo Casanova, Michel Foucault and Marquis de Sade, adding to the multiple narratives presented in the work. Visitors are forced to “interrogate the distance between punishment and pleasure, surveillance and lust, between the system that is apparently watching us and we as actively participating and enjoying the act of surveillance”, as the curator explains. The istallation invites viewers to imagine a future without boundaries and “beyond the epistemological prison of gender, sexual, and race categories”. Quoted in the press release, Cheang says:
With this exhibition we explore the possible strategies for resistance against highly controlled societies, the self-affirming dignity against repression, and the variable versions of self- granted pursuits for (un)happiness.
Read our list of Central and West Asian participations at the 58th Venice Biennale.
The International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia is on view from 11 May to 24 November 2019 at the Arsenale, Giardini and various venues across the city of Venice, Italy. Follow the links for a complete list of locations for national pavilions and collateral events.