Nov 10, 20222 min read

VENICE BIENNALE 2022

November 27 is the last day of the 59th International Art Exhibition, chaired by Roberto Cicutto and curated by Cecilia Alemani, also the chief curator of New York's High Line public art program.

The exhibition takes place in the Giardini, the Arsenale Corderie, the Gaggiandre, and the Giardino delle Vergini and it also includes external interventions throughout Venice. The Biennale hosts 58 nations, 213 artists, and more than 1400 works and objects on display.

RICHARD ORLINSKI Walking Bear, Roaring Lion, resin sculptures (2022) Giardini della Marinaressa

The title, Milk of Dreams, is inspired by the illustrated book of children's stories written in the 1950s by Leonora Carrington, a British surrealist writer and artist active throughout the 20th century.

UFFE ISOLOTTO We Walked The Earth, a hyperrealist installation on the life and death of a family of centaurs

Carrington’s hybrid characters and imaginary worlds fit in well with the chosen themes that arise from questions posed to the selected artists and concern the post-human, the meaning of the human in the relationship with other living beings, animals and plants, and the responsibility for the earth we inhabit, even projecting a vision of what life could be like without mankind.

MARGUERITE HUMEAU “Migrations” (2022) three sculptures made by biological and synthetic resin and polymers, salt, algae, seaweed, bone, pigments, mineral dust, ocean plastic, glass, and stainless steel.

TETSUMI KUDO 1935-1990 Garden of the Metamorphosis in the Space Capsule (1968) artificial flowers, paper, iron, ultraviolet light

The itinerary unfolds through continuous comparison and exploration of the past and the present. Five sections, conceived as "historical capsules", show, in the form of mini-exhibitions, how the themes of the body metamorphosis, the relationship with technology, and the bond with the earth had been likewise addressed by authors in the past, how already pressing was the need for an expression other than conventional thinking about the human.

YUKI KIHARA New Zealand Pavilion Paradise Camp, photographic scene, queer reinterpretation of Gaugin's paintings

The high percentage of female, non-binary and queer artists emphasises the current situation of the ever-growing desire to change a male-centred paradigm. An encounter between creative minds of the past and present, between voices that dialogue without time limits and talk about their identities, abstractions, and rules of life.