Venice 2024

 Hi,

Another packed day with Valentina our guide to the Biennale.

She is well-informed and takes us to the most interesting artists and countries. She is great.

This Biennale has invited artists from many traditions not promoted by Western art institutions all from the Global South. Folk artists, local artists, people representing clans and unknown tribes. Many of them are untrained and yet they make wonderful work. We probably don't really understand it very well because it is not our tradition but we can try. 

At the entrance to the Arsenale

Yinka Shonibare Refugee Astronaut VIII 2024- This greets us at the entrance. Notice what he is carrying and the pattern of his outfit.

Mataaho Collective consisting of Māori women artists created this beautiful entryway.

Using seatbelts

Naminapu Maymuru-White from Australia - bark paintings of the Milky Way

Frieda Toranzo Jaeger from Mexico lives in Berlin. This large mural envisions a future marked by queer freedom, an ecological communion with nature, and the creation of joyful and convivial spaces

Details

                                    

Bordadoras de Isla Negra was a group of self-taught women who, between 1967 and 1980, embroidered brightly colored textiles that vividly tell the story of daily life in this coastal village in Chile.

Julia Isídrez is the mother of Juana Marta Rodas. The big pots are the mothers and the small ones are the daughters. 

Here is another family match-up. This is Fred Graham - the father

And Brett Graham the son. This is a wagon full of eels.

This artist River Claure is a Bolivian photographer who went to live with and work with an Andean mining community to reimagine Saint Exupéry's Little Prince.

Omar Mismar, the homosexual artist who was also in the Giardini show. He lives and works in Beirut.

Dana Awartani is a Palestinian-Saudi artist.

Awartani’s installation Come, let me heal your wounds. Mend Your Broken Bonesbones (2024) is a requiem for the historical and cultural sites that have been destroyed in the Arab world during wars and by acts of terror. These small patches are places of mending.

Nour Jaouda is a Libyan artist who lives in Cairo and London- these are memories of her grandmother's trees.

Daniel Otero Torres from Columbia lives in Paris. Another water-themed piece.

Dalton Paula is a Brazilian artist depicting historical figures of African descent who led or were somewhat involved in, anti-slavery resistance movements in Brazil. All the figures have golden hair.

Bouchra Khalili is a French Moroccan. Her project called  The Mapping Journey Project was developed over three years across the Mediterranean migration routes, collaborating with refugees and stateless citizens from North and Eastern Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.

Resulting in the Constellation Series 2011- can you see the relationship between the journeys traced and these constellations?

Tina Modotti was once a worker, revolutionary, migrant, and exile, and shot some of the most iconic photographs characterizing the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1917).

Güneş Terkol, an Istanbul-based artist. She organizes collectives wherein women reinterpret their histories, current realities, and ways of being.

Bárbara Sánchez-Kane deconstructs and dissects notions of masculinity. Her version of the military uniform with an open back exposing fitted lace lingerie

The Virgin is a multifaceted central motif in La Chola Poblete’s oeuvre as she embodies the syncretism between Western culture and indigenous communities. Her Vírgenes Chola series takes up from the mestizo baroque the identification between the Virgin and the goddess Pachamama (Mother Earth to the Andean communities).

Aravani Art Project is a collective from India composed of cis and transgender women intending to spread positivity and hope to their communities through their commissioned mural paintings. 

Santiago Yahuarcani is a self-taught painter and sculptor from northern Amazonia. They collect the memories told by his ancestors, the sacred knowledge of medicinal plants, the sounds of the jungle, and the Uitoto myths that explain the multiple configurations of the universe.

Rember Yahuarcani is also a painter, writer, curator, and activist from Amazonia in Peru. Through delicate traces and bright colors, Yahuarcani presents scenes that invite us to immerse ourselves in Uitoto thinking, storytelling, and daily life in order to see and feel the world from a different belief system.

Ok, I think I will stop here. I haven't finished with today's adventures but I have covered a lot and with the help of the Biennale website given you more information than you can probably digest in one sitting. 

I'll follow up with another post finishing up the day soon.

Hope you are all doing well.

Hugs,

Susan