Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Estonia, Bolivia, Ivory Coast and Guatemala
Besides the main exhibition and the national pavilions in the Giardini and the Arsenale, there are many exhibitions throughout the city. Interesting are often the national participations of countries beyond the traditional canon. They have no fixed building in the Giardini, since they are mostly young states which not yet existing when the Biennale was founded. Others simple did not have the resources to participate in the beginnings. Nevertheless, their current contributions are remarkable, also with regard to national representation. In contrast to the traditional pavilions, they seem to have fewer reserves to collaborate with artists and curators of other countries. Therefore the result is a rather transnational exhibition, which reflects the domestic culture and global artistic research at the same time. A good example for this is the contribution of Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan: Under One Sun. The Art of Living Together
The Azerbaijan Pavilion, located in the Palazzo Lezze, has the unifying title “Under One Sun. The Art of Living Together”. As curators Martin Roth (Germany) and Emin Mammadov (Azerbaijan) invited the artist group HYPNOTICA (Azerbaijan) and Elvin Nabizade (Georgia/Azerbaijan) to refer to Azerbaijan’s multicultural and multi-religious society. HYPNOTICA does so via video-installations and video mapping, Elvin Nabizade creates extensive sculptures of traditional musical instruments.
“Unity” by HYPNOTICA takes up the whole entrance and shows 20 extracts of the “Under One Sun” documentary film. They are displayed on 20 screens, where the people are talking about their lives, traditions and culture. The verbal expressions as English texts are projected under the screens and are running downwards to mix on the ground into a river of cultures. Moreover, the course of words flows also over a sculpture to form an image of a person. Digital music underlays the visual stream.
Elvin Nabizade’s sculptures on the first floor are contrasting strongly to the high-tech installation. His musical instruments remain silent. Nevertheless, their arrangement paves the way to a play of incident light and shadows. A peaceful poetry. Also poetic, but based on modern high-tech, the Pavilion of Bosnia and Herzegovina welcomes the visitor.
Bosnia and Herzegovina: University of Disaster
After four years of absence, Bosnia and Herzegovina is again present at Venice and again in the Palazzo Malipiero. Like in 2013, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Banja Luka (Republic of Srpska, entity of the federal state) supports the project of an international curator team. Radenko Milak as selected artist cooperated with the Slovenian Roman Uranjek and invited other international creatives (Lamin Fofana, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Juan-Pedro Fabra Guemberena, Loulou Cherinet, Geraldine Juárez & Joel Danielsson, Nils Bech & Ida Ekblad).
Besides the video installation “From the far side of the moon” directed by Milak, there are his watercolour paintings “University of Disaster” and the diptychs “Dates” by Milak and Uranjek in the centre of the exhibition. In the adjoining rooms, the other artists are exposed or perform during the show. As connection between all works is a questioning about the disaster, the catastrophe and its pictorial representation. As complement a conference with writers, researchers, theorists and artists will be held during the last week of the Biennale.
With its international focus, by the curatorial team, the participating creatives and the subject, Bosnia and Herzegovina shows, that this country at the edge of Europe has arrived in a globalised world. At the same time, the internationality refers to the history as part of the multi-ethnic state Austria-Hungary and the actual country of different cultures and ethnicities. Moreover, the look to catastrophes hints to the closer or farer past as well as to the present and future. For the Estonian Pavilion Katja Novitskova glances towards the future.
Estonia: If only you could see what I’ve seen with your eyes
Even though the curator Kati Ilves and the artist Katja Novitskova from the Estonian contribution are born in Estonia, their perspective is not less international, since they are both working abroad. In addition, the subject, a reflexion about how technical progress, digitalisation, mass media and the change of our perception of images, is an approach to a global challenge.
Already the title of the exhibition, a quote of the cult film “Blade Runner” from 1982, indicates that data evaluation by human and increasingly robotic agents is considered. Information from all possible sectors of human and nonhuman lives are collected and associated into new contexts. Consequently, Katja Novitskova takes images and assembles them to a new whole. However, the mostly three-dimensional pictures are installed on a flat support, so that they remind more to cut and paste products. The arrangement united with light and video projections creates a unknown, partly frightening, new world. As part of the former new world, Bolivia focuses on human relationships and humanism.
Bolivia: Essence
The Plurinational State of Bolivia proposes in the Scuola dei Lanieri an exhibition, which focuses on art as a space to preserve and concentrate all human relationships and humanism. Besides, the potential of conflict becomes as well visible since the three invited artists are all dealing somehow with colonisation. It is not astonishing, that the subject occurs in the context of Bolivia, due to its history and present situation. Although over the half of the population is part of indigenous groups, the first indigenous president was elected only in 2005, 280 years after the independence.
Referring not only to the historical colonisation, the oeuvres on view also direct to current forms of it. Sol Mateo (Bolivia) created for “Genetic Mutation of Colonialism” a split armchair on burned pieces. Hereby he wants to point on the requirement to understand identity in the contemporary society, which in nowadays is volatile. Jannis Markopoulos (Greece) questions with “Amphibian Spaces” the occupation of terrestrial environments by social circumstances like the individualisation. Mythic objects and things of daily life are isolated by packing paper. José Ballivián’s (Bolivia) work “Paisaje Marka” is based on the Waka Waka, a dance created by the Aymara indigenous population to ironize the Spanish attitudes. Transferred to the present by two bulls oriented in different directions the work hints to the problem of building an intercultural society. Also the artists of the Ivory Coast contribution are dealing with interculturality, but on a different background.
Ivory Coast: The Juices of Time
Under the title “The Juices of Time” the Pavilion of the Ivory Coast combines five artists in the Palazzo Dolfin Gabrielli. Four originate from the exhibiting country: Ouattara Watts, Joana Choumali, Jems Robert Koko Bi and Kagnedjatou Joachim Silué. They all live or lived abroad. Raimondo Galeano is from Italy.
The title stems from an exchange between Yacouba Konaté, the commissioner and Alpha Blondy, where the reggae musician recounts the source of his inspirations as the juice squeezed from his brain after a night of sleep and the accompanying deactivation of the brain. Correspondingly, the selected artists are using their juice to create something hinting to their awareness of our time. Jems Robert Koko Bi does this very firmly by dealing with his horror experience during the terror attack in Grand Bassam the 13th March 2016.
Joana Choumali questions in her photo series “Adorn” the significance of beauty for present-day black African women. Whereas in “Translation” she approaches African migration. Two photos complete each other: one is taken in Africa, where the expatriate is missing, the other he/she appears in his/her new context.
Ouattara Watts developed his own visual language through recurring individual signs and personal usage of colour. In his neo-expressionist paintings, he refers to his environment and examines oppositions like mythology and science.
Kagnedjatou Joachim Silué uses materials of the Arte Povera like glass, wood, wire etc. They remind still-life paintings at the threshold to sculpture. As colours are black and white, outlined by the beige of wood dominant. Artworks like the triptych “In little mind, a little vision” are fenced by wire like closed borders. In “Alt !!! Same causes same effets” are standing armed people on unsteady legs. This is our present and hopefully not the future.
Raimondo Galeano carries us off seemingly into the space. His fluorescent paintings, made of luminous powders and pigments, demands a darkened room to be seen. Moreover, the visitor is invited to add light traces and change the present, at least for a while.
In a more classical way, the artists of the Guatemalan Pavilion are reflecting about borders, but in an expanded sense.
Guatemala: La marge
A little off the tourist path is the Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello in Cannaregio, with the participation of Guatemala. The Italian curator Daniele Radini Tedeschi united Guatemalan and Italian artists to the group show “La Marge” (The Margin). All the works are dealing with borders or edges in various interpretations of the meaning.
Lourdes de la Riva contributed a compound digital photo with ink interventions. In the background, there is a flowering forest; in the foreground are by moths perforated books. The now irregular page margins resemble craggy rocks. Cesar Barrios shows in four photos how perception limits are shifted by fog. Andrea Prandi created a video illustrating states of minds associated to the four seasons. Also Elsie Wunderlich sculptures deal with spirits and nature and Arturo Monroy reflects about the finality of life.
Moreover, Ermino Tansini and the artist collective El círculo mágico (Mirella Barberio, Aldo Basili, Sabrina Bertolelli, Stefano Di Loreto, Giancarlo Flati, Carlo Marraffa) are on view.
