Following our list of Asia-Pacific participations, below is a line-up of who will be representing Central and West Asian countries at this year’s Biennale.
Armenia
Commissioned by Nazenie Garibian, Deputy Minister, the Armenian Pavilion is titled “Revolutionary Sensorium” and is curated by Susanna Gyulamiryan. The exhibited artists include “ArtlabYerevan” Artistic Group (Gagik Charchyan, Hovhannes Margaryan, Arthur Petrosyan, Vardan Jaloyan) and Narine Arakelian. Details will be updated once the Biennale opens.
Azerbaijan
Titled “Virtual Reality”, the Azerbaijan Pavilion is commissioned by Mammad Ahmadzada, Ambassador of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and co-curated by Italian independent curator Gianni Mercurio and Emin Mammadov, Artistic Advisor of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation. Marking Azerbaijan’s fourth participation at the Biennale, the pavilion is realised by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, Baku. The exhibition draws on one of the greatest threats to democracy, free debate and progress – the phenomenon of fake news – and features the work of Kanan Aliyev, Ulviyya Aliyeva, Zeigam Azizov, Orkhan Mammadov and Zarnishan Yusifova. The five artists will explore the “challenges and implications of living in a ‘post-truth’ era and social media’s double-edged sword”, as the press release explains. The concept for the exhibition stems from today’s bombardment of news that we are subjected to, with individuals checking their phone 150 times a day on average, and two billions using social networks.
The show brings attention to a widespread habit of checking and reading news via social media sharing platforms, which often circulate fake, biased news. Many, instead of cross-checking the information they are fed, will only go that far, thus ending up believing fake stories. For “Virtual Reality,” the artists have produced interactive multimedia works, installations and sculptures that question our everyday reality, and invite us to reflect on contemporary politics and the fake news phenomenon. Zarnishan Yusifova questions the connection between social media and human relationships in her Bubble Reflection, while Zeigam Azizov in his Headlines considers media domination by focusing on the sway that headlines command. Orkhan Mammadov presents two installations, providing immersive audiovisual experiences that blur the boundaries between physical and digital spaces. Kanan Aliyev and Ulviyya Aliyeva present Globe, which reflects on how directions can easily change in the political sphere with the use of international pawns, and The Slinky Effect, looking at the effects of the flow of news that we receive from social networks every second of the day.
Cyprus
Curated by Jacopo Crivelli Visconti, the Cyprus Pavilion is titled “Christoforos Savva: Untimely, Again” and presents a posthumous exhibition of works by Christoforos Savva (1924–1968), one of the most groundbreaking Cypriot artists of the 20th century. Savva spent a long time between Paris and London in the 1950s, settling back to Nicosia in 1960. He produced an extensive body of works, ranging from paintings to sculptures, experimentations with wire, cement and leftovers from fabrics, as well as furniture design and architectural interventions. His practice shifted away from the confines of form and content, into a sphere beyond boundaries, which reflected his role in Cypriot society and art scene at the time.
He was at the forefront of the art scene not only as an artist but also as a supporter of the arts. In 1968 he co-founded Apophasis [Decision] with Welsh artist Glyn Hughes, the first independent cultural centre of the newly established Republic of Cyprus. The space featured a diverse range of activities, from exhibitions and workshops, to plays, talks and film screenings. Savva passed away in 1968, only a few weeks after featuring among the artists representing Cyprus in its inaugural Pavilion at the 34th Venice Biennale. The exhibition of Savva’s work at the Cyprus Pavilion in 2019 is part of a long-term research project on the artist’s legacy, and an attempt to look at the island’s recent history to better understand its contemporaneity and the multiplicities of its artistic modernities.
Denmark
The Denmark Pavilion will present “Heirloom”, an exhibition by Larissa Sansour, curated by Birmingham- and Amsterdam-based independent curator and writer Nat Muller. Larissa Sansour (b. 1973) was born in East Jerusalem, Palestine, and studied fine art in Copenhagen, London and New York. Her interdisciplinary practice uses video, photography, experimental documentary, scupture and installation to explore current socio-political issues and look at the complexity of life in Palestine and the Middle East. “Heirloom” will comprise a two- channel science-fiction film, a sculptural installation and an architectural intervention, inviting the viewer into a dark universe, typical of her artistic production. Sansour borrow from film and popular cutlure, weaving together reality and fiction, myth and history, to comments on the state of society and politics in the region.
The film In Vitro engages with themes of trauma, exile and collective memory, and takes place in Bethlehem decades after an eco-disaster. Filmed in Bethlehem, London and Oxfordshire, In Vitro is directed with Søren Lind and features the internationally-renowned Palestinian actors Hiam Abbass and Maisa Abd Elhadi. The film centres around a dialogue between the dying founder of a subterranean orchard and her young sucessor, who was born undergound and has never seen the town she is destinate to repopulate. Focusing on the young protagonist’s memories and struggles, the work reflects Sansour’s recent interest in thenegotiation of identity markers and signifiers.
The curator expands on her work:
Science fiction becomes a vehicle in which imaginaries and future scenarios can be challenged and tested, and in which individual narratives and personal experiences intertwine with collective ones; it becomes a place and time in which remembrance and forgetfulness compete, and where the past, the present, and even the future, might be dispossessed. Nevertheless it is also is a realm of possibility, of alternative world-making, if not radical alterity.
Georgia
The Georgia Pavilion will feature a solo exhibition by Anna K.E. titled “REARMIRRORVIEW, Simulation is Simulation, is Simulation, is Simulation…”, commissioned by Creative Georgia (Ana Riaboshenko, Director) and curated by New York’s New Museum curator Margot Norton. Anna K.E. (b 1986) was trained as a classical ballet dancer, and has developed an acute awareness of how the body moves through space. Her architectural environments are arranged as choreographies that lead viewers fluidly around the space. K.E.’s practice encompasses video, performance, sculpture, drawing and installation. Her videos often features her own body in motion, restricted, contorted or isolated, pointing towards “an evolving interdependency between our corporeal and digital selves”. K.E.’s works are poignant allegories of contemporary life, revealing how disparately diverse elements can coexist.
The Venice project features an installation interspersed with videos and steel faucet-like sculptures based on the original Georgian alphabet, Asomtavruli, with water circulating through the letters in a continuous stream. The work suggests a process of transformation, with the letters phonetically spelling the English word ‘deranged’, referring to something that has become disturbed, irrational or unstable. As the curator writes, the project for the pavilion will be
equal parts public stage, ascending and descending tribunal platform, communal fountain, and sculptural object of observation. Her rising plateaus constructed of steel framework and brightly colored powder-coated tiles will recall a matrix of digital pixels at low resolution, transporting viewers into an environment that suggests a sleek synthetic model. As her title suggests, K.E. here creates a mirror whereby transitional processes are inverted and a flat simulation is crafted into a vibrant multi-dimensional landscape.
Iran
Titled “of being and singing”, the Iran Pavilion is commissioned by Hadi Mozafari, General Manager of Visual Arts Administration of Islamic Republic of Iran, and curated by Ali Bakhtiari. The exhibition includes Reza Lavassani, Samira Alikhanzadeh and Ali Meer Azimi. “of Being and Singing” is a homage to life and to precious moments of the past, present and future. The exhibition carries a message rarely communicated through contemporary media, one of peace from the cultural and artistic scene of Iran. The three artists’ works tackle themes of being and time, identity and memory, reality and dreams. Their practices challenge the common view of Iranian art as mostly composed of local elements and motifs, showing its universal aspects through the diversity of contemporary artistic practices. Details will be updated once the Biennale opens.
Iraq
For the first time, the Iraq Pavilion, presented by Ruya Foundation and curated by Tamara Chalabi and Paolo Colombo, will feature a solo exhibition. Iraqi-Kurdish artist Serwan Baran (b. 1968, Baghdad) will represent his country with “Fatherland” , which will include large-scale and site-specific works by the renowned ‘new generation’ painter. Baran lived through four decades of war in Iraq and was a soldier in both the 1980s and 1990s conflicts. During his time in the military, he was a war artist and had to record the victories of the Iraqi army for government propaganda. The then shifted to a more expressionist style to depict his own personal experience, creating figural abstractions verging on the grotesque.
In Venice, the pavilion will invoke the feeling of a war zone, featuring the artist’s signature dark and atmospheric style. Baran seeks to question how the notion of ‘fatherland’ has been used to justify the horrors of war, soldiers’ efforts and leaders’ tactics. The artist’s work reveals hidden truths behind the heroic portrayal of combatants and the official reasons for conflicts, shining a light on the often true nature of a soldier – not that of a valiant and obedient hero, but rather of a victim of brutal authority.
The artist examines the way the ‘fatherland’ abuses its power, and takes an in-depth look at the nature of man, his indulgence to violence and instincts of dictatorship. Co-curator Paolo Colombo comments:
Serwan Baran’s large-scale works are forceful denunciations of the horrors of war. They are meant to overwhelm the viewer, as one is overwhelmed in the proximity of a large film screen. His statement is not restrained, and the scale of his works is in perfect tune with the volume of his proclamation.
Israel
The Israeli Pavilion is titled “Field Hospital X” and is commissioned by Michael Gov and Arad Turgeman, and curated by Avi Lubin. The pavilion will feature Aya Ben Ron’s Field Hospital X (FHX), a mobile, international institution established by the artist. A multidisciplinary artist, Aya Ben Ron (b. 1967, Tel Aviv) exposes the intricacies of caregiving and receiving care. Her works examine social perceptions and visual representations of the ‘ill’ and of ‘illness’ in a cultural and historical context. She explores the human motivations to rescue, repair and recover by observing physical and mental trauma. The artist uses various aesthetic approaches to reexamine the concepts of beauty and perfection, delving into the prospect of healing in both the public and personal spheres.
Field Hospital X (FHX) will launch at the Venice Biennale and will continue to travel, develop and expand to various locations around the world. FHX isan organisation that is committed to researching the way art can react and act in the face of social ills and corrupt values in society. Upon entering the space, visitors will have to take a queue number and wait in the Reception Area, where they will watch the FHX TV Program, a video work giving information about the hospital’s idelogy, its Care-Areas and Care-Kits. Once their number is called, visitors will continue to the Care-Areas and FHX facilities. Here they will sit in Care-Chairs to experience individual screenings of videos – the Care-Kits – by Ben Ron and three invited artists, and listen to Second-Opinions on the videos given by experts in different fields, such as philosophy, law, medicine, psychoanalysis, education and anthropology, among others.
The Care-Kits feature No Body by Aya Ben Ron; Habit, by an anonymous Palestinian artist, about his personal resistance to the Israeli occupation; Block of Clay, by Roey Victoria Heifetz and Zohar Melinek-Ezra, confronting gender identity and alienation from the body; and Institutional Abduction, by Idit Avrahami, about the institutional abduction and forced disappearance of thousands of babies and young children from Yemenite, Mizrahi and Balkan immigrant families in Israel in the 1950s. According to the artist statement on the work,
FHX originated with the intention to create a safe space to screen No Body, a video by Ben Ron about abuse in the family [telling her own story], as well as to give voice to other stories that need to be heard. Learning from the structure and practice of hospitals, health maintenance organisations and healing resorts, FHX provides a space in which silenced voices can be heard and social injustices can be seen.
Saudi Arabia
Titled “After Illusion بعد توهم “, the Saudi Arabian Pavilion is commissioned by Misk Art Insitute and curated by Eiman Elgibreen, a practicing artist and a lecturer of History of Art at Princess Nourah University in Riyadh. The pavilion features a solo presentation by Jeddah-based artist Zahrah Al Ghamdi (b. 1977). Her work, described as land art, explores memory and history through traditional architecture in both medium and assemblage. Her site-specific work is the result of a laborious and meticulous process in which she assembles particles of earth, clay, rocks, leather and water. Her practice draws on the notion of embodied memory, to explore themes of cultural identity, memory and loss. The southwestern region of Saudi Arabia, where she grew up, with its traditional Aseeri architecture, plays an integral role in her practice.
“After Illusion” is inspired by an ancient Arabic poem by Zuhayr bin Abī Sūlmā (520-609), in which he describes his struggle to recognise his home after being away for 20 years. Al Ghamdi recognises the poet’s sentiment, reflective of her own personal experience: she left Saudi Arabia to complete a Masters and a PhD at Coventry University in the United Kingdom before returning to Jeddah in 2009. For the Venice exhibition, Al Ghamdi utilises leather and cotton for her work, materials that recall a childhood spent herding sheep with her grandfather.
The artist spent months cutting, sewing, shredding, boiling, drying and burning local leather into 52,000 abstract pieces, which she uses in the installation spreading throughout the exhibition space and creating a labyrinthine path. The objects look like shells and nuts, and reference random organic forms, Aseeri ornaments and the local architecture of her birth village in the southwest of the country, Al-Baha, which lies almost in ruins today.
Syria
“Syrian Civilization is still alive” is commissioned and curater by Emad Kashout. The pavilion will feature the work of a diverse, international group of artists, including Abdalah Abouassali, Giacomo Braglia, Ibrahim Al Hamid, Chen Huasha, Saed Salloum, Xie Tian, Saad Yagan, Primo Vanadia and Giuseppe Biasio. Details will be updated once the Biennale opens.
Turkey
Titled “We, Elsewhere”, the Turkish Pavilion is organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) and sponsored by Fiat. Curated by Zeynep Öz, the exhibition features a site-specific installation by İnci Eviner comprising elements such as reconfigured objects, drawings, video, sound and performance. The project is an investigation into the spaces we create and the spaces that are created for us as a result of collective displacement. The work further explores how people who find themselves there interact with and react to such spaces, as well as with one another and their memories.
As the title suggests, the installation evokes a sense of a search for the missing, the erased and that which is elsewhere. Visitors will walk around the space, which will include ramps, courtyards and edges, allowing views through cuts and cracks along the walls. With the complexity of the space and its elements, the artist suggests that memory eases conflict, and provides an experience of struggle akin to that described by Hannah Arendt in We Refugees.
During a press conference in February 2019, the artist revealed about the project:
These figures are constantly changing places through the space to find their other halves. This effort is actually an attempt to reclaim their interrupted and invalidated memory and bodies. In doing so, mythologies and memories, the habits of everyday life, their joy and sorrow need to be picked up one by one and put into place. I try to keep myself in and out of events to witness all of this. The responsibility of being a witness is in the questioning of being ‘us’.
United Arab Emirates
Curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, the UAE Pavilion will feature a major site-specific video installation by award-winning poet and filmmaker Nujoom Alghanem. Considered a leading voice of her generation, the artist has contributed to new forms of contemporary Arabic poetry, and directed a number of features and documentaries that further the discourse around gender issues and societal norms. Nujoom Alghanem explains that her practice is shaped by her personal experience in a rapidly-transforming society, and her approach aims to resolve the tension between tradition and modernity.
The Pavilion’s curators have commented on the artist:
Nujoom Alghanem is a driving force behind some of the most innovative literary positions and bold cinematic practices of the UAE and the Gulf. Her evocative work is as profoundly concerned with expanding the formal components of her practice, mainly poetry and film, as it is with capturing the complexity of the human condition through telling remarkable stories about exceptional characters. We are confident that the site-specific commission with which she will be representing the UAE at the 2019 Venice Biennale will confront the international arts community with a truly unique, multidisciplinary artistic position.
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.