Today’s world is a sea of uncertainties in a landscape of metamorphosis. That is why the metaphor of travel is one of the most powerful to explain the times we live in. Faced with a sea of possible routes, what could be the itinerary today to appreciate the essence of the contemporary?

There is no better starting point for a fortunate journey than Venice. After all, Venice is a fish, as Tiziano Scarpa affirms, because “it has been sailing since the night of time”. There have been many guides to Venice since Ruskin wrote the first one; all of them have art at their centre. It is not surprising, then, that the city reigns among the destinations of high culture, and that its biennial is one of the essential references for tracking trends and perceiving art as a device, as the medium that favours new looks at our surroundings.

The Biennial can thus be understood as an imago mundi, a panorama that assumes the perspectives that each country brings with it to this great global showcase. In this way, it brings together global and local discourses, the past and the future of a complex cartography, the result of which is a lavish and varied concentration of artistic proposals.

Policies and Poetics of the Biennial

The microcosm of 2022 establishes correspondences between forms and experiences of reality, reproducing on another scale policies and approaches of the international scene. On the one hand, the idyllic garden of peaceful competition that is the Giardini shows eloquent scenes: in its centre the United States pavilion converted into a primitive hut by the Golden Lion Simone Leigh; in front of this pavilion: Ukraine Square; and a few metres away the mutism of the Russian pavilion, following the resignation of curator and artists.

On the other hand, the central exhibition, curated by Cecilia Alemani, vindicated and vilified for political rather than artistic reasons, especially for being paradigmatically composed of an immense majority of female names. Her inspiration comes from Leonora Carrington: “Life reinvents itself through the prism of imagination and grants us metamorphosis, turning us into something different from what we are.” Precisely its beginning from the “margins” of history such as surrealism, its fall into stereotypes such as motherhood or its tendency towards monumentalism are the aspects that have earned it criticism, such as that of Ester Coen in Il Manifesto, who understands this edition as an ideological and illusory “act of reparation” that leads to the “emptiness of a thought that responds to issues of political correctness”.

Is it really a pyrotechnic show whose aestheticism would override the social message? Many of the adjectives mentioned are excessive, even if one can recognize some doubts about the pertinence of the mode chosen for their claims. In any case, the objections about the staging could be leveled at all the biennials, where the abundance of what is exhibited imposes the intuitive on processes or research. 

However, the vision that remains on the surface of the representation, focusing only on questions of gender or race, is limited, because Alemani also manifests other concerns, such as the relationship between individuals and the Earth, while at the same time activating a historiographical strategy that is not evident to the hurried gaze of the tourist. Indeed, thanks to thinkers such as Rosi Braidotti and Donna Haraway, she demonstrates a theoretical basis and, above all, is exceptional when she relates her arguments to moments in the past that allow us to think about the roots of the contemporary.

In addition, to her credit, she is committed to numerous young artists, while at the same time recovering other historical artists belonging to different avant-gardes. The exhibition design stands out in this project, organised around five temporary capsules that explore trends by delving into history. It is not always obvious, but these capsules radiate Alemani’s approaches to the constellation of works of the present, which acquire in the Arsenale a suggestive crescendo of tension, inviting the viewer to wonder what the future holds.

This year’s prizes have confirmed their post-colonial dimension, which links up with previous biennials, such as those of Achille Bonito Oliva or Jean Clair. The exemplary essence of all this: the magnificent meta-narrative staged by the French-Algerian Zineb Sedira in the cinematographic French pavilion. Indeed, many national pavilions reinforce the demand for a change of perspective, precisely because art is seen as a device for analyzing our society. Thus, in the face of the apparent dispersion of proposals, a significant multicultural current inspired by Alemani appears beneath the epidermis of national excellence.

In the first place, manifested in the reception of foreigners in historical pavilions (Ukraine in the Arsenale or the cession of the Dutch pavilion to Estonia), stateless artists or expressions of cultural miscegenation (France and Switzerland, among others). Secondly, the prominence of previously unseen ethnic minorities (the tribute to the Sami community in the Nordic pavilion, or the gypsy community in Greece and Poland), the confirmation of trends from recent editions (the push from Africa, with a notable presence of artists living in the cultural periphery); moreover, the “laboratory of the future” of the architecture biennale 2023 will have this continent as one of its protagonists) and of important movements of the present (after “Black Lives Matter”, an African-American represents the United States for the first time).

Does the journey to the Biennale then become a symbolic journey through cross-border promises and aspirations for greater levels of justice? A cosmopolitan air does indeed prevail, but this should not lead one to think that everything is dominated by politics, above and beyond the artistic quality of the artists exhibited. The case of Simone Leigh is enough to show that confusing monumentality with emptiness is fallacious, since her double appearance in the Arsenale and in the Giardini demonstrates how an imposing presence is not incompatible with the construction of a socially and artistically significant discourse.

In fact, this year there are numerous cases of outstanding experimentation: there are several initiatives that intelligently transform the vision of Venetian spaces (the splendid interventions in the Spanish and German pavilions); of local history (as the Italian one lucidly represents); of the possibilities of technology (Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Malta, Iceland, Greece or Georgia, among others). Hence, the repertoire of imaginaries and realities is particularly rich, demonstrating that the Biennial is a privileged universe in which to identify new languages for experiences in continuous metamorphosis.

Cultural and Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

This edition therefore represents a step forward for groups traditionally on the margins of history, although it also shows that we are still in transit towards a territory of equality. For this reason, we can lose ourselves in absurd debates or appreciate its analytical and narrative capacity, as we are faced with a stimulating way of making history and proposing lines of research that, in short, urges us to write new stories.

In fact, the voices activated by Alemani have found an echo in other institutions in the city, such as the excellent Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted modernity, at the Peggy Guggenheim, which could well be the preamble to the Biennial; or the presence of Louise Nevelson at the Biennial and at the recently restored Procuratie vecchie.

On the other hand, within Venice’s overwhelming cultural offer, the colossal installations by Anselm Kiefer and Anish Kapoor in several of the city’s most significant palaces have shone out. In addition, there is a growing phenomenon: the continuous arrival of major foundations in recent years (Pinault, Prada, Vuitton, Vedova, V-A-C Zattere, etc.) to which others are now being added (Kapoor, Berggruen Institute). Is it a phenomenon linked to prestige, cultural tourism, various speculations or Venice’s need for funding to preserve its immense heritage? 

It is obvious that, today, everything could be encompassed in the idea of art as “commodity-form”, insisted on by theoreticians such as Enrico Di Palma and Giancarlo Pagliasso, a panorama where cultural production is examined in the light of the commodification of its industry and where staging (physical and communicative) is becoming more and more relevant. One of its consequences is to be expected: the logics of representation are conditioned by the art market.

In this sense, the fundamental role that galleries have acquired for the production of works and activities destined for the Biennial, and the backing of foundations for most of its collateral events, is obvious. In fact, owning the Biennale label has a price that many institutions are willing to pay, being the gateway to a system that has made Venice a mecca for luxury tourism and contemporary art.

In addition to this, there is the need for resources to maintain the Italian heritage, a process in which these foundations are playing an important role, in addition to the occasional sponsorship of exhibitions and events. In this respect, the work carried out by the Fondation Louis Vuitton for the rescue of ancient kiosks or the restoration of the famous Ca’ d’Oro mosaics has attracted attention.

All of this is creating a model that must be analyzed in order to assess the balance between heritage conservation and the commercialization of culture within processes linked to tourism, so that Venice does not see places that have built its myth compromised. The Biennale is already part of this, as an artistic and cultural laboratory in which to synthesize the wonders and tensions of the present day. It is therefore an obligatory stop, above all to surrender oneself —as Claudio Magris points out— to “the unpredictability of the journey, the confusion and dispersion of the paths, the randomness of the stops, the uncertainty of the nights, the asymmetry of all the routes”, once one assumes the only possible condition in contemporaneity: to be travellers.

PEDRO MEDINA is a lecturer, editor, art critic, and curator based in Torino, Italy.

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