CIRCA 113 review

Venice: The 51st Venice Biennale

Guerrilla Girls: Benvenuti alla Biennale Femminista, 2005, digital print, 518 x 400 cm; courtesy Venice Biennale

"This is all so contemporary, contemporary, contemporary!" whooped exuberant actors posing as attendants in the German pavilion of the 51st Venice Biennale, their confrontational performance encapsulating what the Biennale purports itself to be - a benchmark event that, every two years, attempts to place its finger on the pulse of contemporary art.¹

Any such attempt is, of course, an impossibility, and with countless biennials springing up around the world, it has often been argued that the biennial format is becoming increasingly irrelevant, problematic and unwieldy in a fractured, pluralistic art world. However, the Venice Biennale is the original of its kind and it remains the most high-profile. Its presence shows no sign of diminishing either - it continues to grow in size every year, with a record seventy countries participating this time round.

But if the Biennale is somehow supposed to be a barometer of the state of contemporary art - showcasing the most exciting work of the moment and identifying future trends - this year's international exhibition has in many ways shied away from such potential. In 2003, Francesco Bonami's chaotic and over-ambitious programme was almost universally derided. For the fifty-first Biennale, the organisers seem to have deliberately tried to distance themselves from his approach.

The change in strategy is reflected in a statement made by Biennale President Davide Croff: the Biennale intends to reconfirm "its position as a leader able to give directions, to make choices. It must once again be capable not only of challenging, but also guiding."² This time the international exhibition has been divided in two and curated for the first time by two women. Spanish curator María de Corral's The Experience of Art is on display in the Giardini's Italian pavilion, while Always a Little Further by fellow Spaniard Rosa Martínez is housed in the vast abandoned shipyard at the Arsenale. Whereas the 2003 Biennale Dttempted to avoid any form of overriding curatorial "omnipresence,"³ this year's two international exhibitions rather tentatively hint at a certain sense of order within the fragmentation, proliferation and confusion of contemporary art practice. Consequently, these exhibitions are pared down and more digestible in comparison with the last Biennale, with the number of participating artists reduced from a staggering 350 down to a more manageable ninety. The result, however, is also rather safe, as the curators have chosen mostly well-known artists who have already established solid reputations.

Martínez took the notion of a voyage as a starting point in an attempt to create connections between "romanticism and enlightenment, ideology and economy, enthusiasm and exhaustion."⁴ Martínez' intention is that visitors embark on a journey that will reinvigorate their belief in the possibilities of art. A large proportion of the work is political and confrontational, and there is a notable feminist theme running through the exhibition. This is immediately made clear when the visitor enters the Arsenale and is confronted with the Guerrilla Girls' sloganeering billboards and a giant chandelier made out of tampons by Joana Vasconcelos. Female artists were also given prominence at this year's prize giving - all but one of the awards went to women.

Joana Vasconcelos: A noiva, 2001, stainless steel, OB tampons, 300 x 300 x 680 cm; Collection António Cachola, Campo Maior; photo / courtesy the author

De Corral has attempted to stage an exhibition which, rather than being deterministic or finite, is "a process defined in terms of relations between different subjects, forms, ideas and spaces; more like a centre of research than a mass of certainties."⁵ In keeping with this trajectory, de Corral has included pieces by contemporary artists and work by major figures of twentieth-century art. Alongside Agnes Martin, Antoni Tàpies and Francis Bacon there are works by the likes of Jenny Holzer, Rachel Whiteread, Juan Muñoz and Bruce Nauman. But with pieces by so many familiar names, de Correl is not pushing out any boundaries and there is little opportunity for the viewer to make new discoveries.

It is perhaps inevitable that many participating artists chose to make direct comments on the institution of the Biennale itself. In the Spanish Pavilion, Antonio Muntadas listed all the countries not included in the Biennale, while the aforementioned Guerrilla Girls complained of its chauvinistic bias. China, exhibiting for the first time in an official capacity, featured a video piece in which feng shui master Wang Qiheng analysed the political significance of the design and layout of the national pavilions. Instead of displaying art inside the Austrian pavilion, Hans Schabus built a mountainous construction around it. Artist David Knorr left the Romanian pavilion empty: he simply painted the walls black and opened the emergency exit. Visitors are invited to take away a small book filled with essays on cultural and social issues regarding eastern Europe.

Gregor Schneider's controversial contribution to Always a Little Further is harshly critical of the Biennale: a video describes how his desire to place a black cube in the centre of St Mark's Square was "rejected for political reasons," mainly because a reconfiguration of the Ka'ba - the central holy tower of Islam in Mecca - could be taken as an insult to the Muslim faith. Schneider's video also claimed that he was censored from documenting the project in the Biennale catalogue and, indeed, the catalogue contains six, pointedly blacked-out pages in place of any information about the artist's project.

Some of the more interesting national exhibitions are to be found in the off-site pavilions. The most successful exhibitions also tend to be those that show work by more than one artist or in which a group of countries exhibit together. Such strategies favour multiplicity over the monolithic and diversity over the recognition of a single artist. The Central Asian Pavilion features Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, exhibiting at the Biennale for the first time. This powerful and thought-provoking exhibition demonstrates nations engaging with their histories and traditions while searching for new personal and national identities in a post-Soviet era.

David Knorr: Romanian pavilion; photo / courtesy the author

In the Iranian pavilion, an installation by Mandana Moghaddam consists of a large concrete block hanging from the ceiling by four thick plaits of hair, integrating an Iranian myth with the experience of women in contemporary Iran. A female artist is also included in Afghanistan's pavilion, with Lida Abdul's video works highlighting the climate of fear and futility that has pervaded Afghanistan in recent years. Also memorable was the Latin-American pavilion, which featured work from twelve countries. There the loose theme of The Weft and the Warp was a starting point for a variety of work that combines traditional history and culture with themes of violence, urbanism and contemporary existence. As a collateral event, Taiwan's The Spectre of Freedom displayed politically engaged work that investigates the threat of terrorism, the illusion of freedom, the nature of consumerism and the power of the media.

Entries from eastern Europe also demonstrate the variety and inventiveness of art production beyond the so-called 'margins' of the traditional art world. The Serbia and Montenegro pavilion at Giardini features a powerful video work by Natalija Vujosevic which reflects on human relationships and individual and shared experience. Ukraine is exhibiting an absorbing collection of footage documenting the 2004 Orange Revolution, and in the Estonian pavilion, there is a moving selection of Mark Raidpere's highly personal video works that explore the boundaries between the private and the public, the real and the staged.

With its stress on national representation and attempted global reach, the structures of the Biennale could be seen as somewhat outmoded. Croff, however, insists that the Biennale "is not seen as a frame, but as a lens focused on the future."⁶ Because of the sheer scale of the Biennale, it is impossible to see everything, but what does become clear is that the Biennale is certainly not an all-encompassing, global frame that captures within it a precise picture of the state of art. But neither is it a single lens; rather it is several lenses, focusing in for a moment and capturing brief, fleeting glimpses, but always remaining open and indeterminable. Contemporary art has no single, definable pulse - it has many.

Eimear McKeith is a writer based in Dublin.

The 51st Venice Biennale, Venice, June - November 2005

¹According to Biennale President Davide Croff, "this edition will represent not only a vast general outlook, but an opportunity to reflect on the state of art." Quoted in a press release, La Biennale di Venezia 51st International Art Exhibition. The performances were organised by German artist Tino Sehgal.

²Davide Croff, Introduction, La Biennale di Venezia 51st International Art Exhibition catalogue, Venice: Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia, 2005.

³Francesco Bonami, The End of the XXth Century, accessed online at www.labiennale.org/en.

⁴Rosa Martínez, Always a little further, La Biennale di Venezia 51st International Art Exhibition catalogue.

⁵María De Corral, The experience of art, La Biennale di Venezia 51st International Art Exhibition catalogue.

⁶Croff, op. cit.

Reviews of the Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland pavilions at the Venice Biennale will appear in the winter issue of CIRCA. In that regard, please see our online questionnaire at recirca.com/poll/venice.

Article reproduced from CIRCA 113, Autumn 2005, pp.80-83
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