By Janet Ekstract
İSTANBUL- A major reason to get to the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022 is that it’s the first time in the biennale’s history that a majority of female and gender nonconforming artists are being showcased by biennale curator Cecilia Alemani. The biennale theme entitled “The Milk of Dreams” features over 200 female artists – many of whom are quite well known – giving them a much wider platform for their work while exploring themes that include gender norms, colonialism and climate change. This year’s biennale is only the fourth time that the fair has been curated by a female with a number of major awards going to prolific female artists. Alemani, an Italian curator based in New York, explained that her choice of female artists for the biennale was borne out of a “process” as she told the Associated Press: “I think some of the best artists today are women artists” and in past biennales, she said there was a “preponderance of male artists.” Though Alemani laments the ever-present gender gap in the artworld, she has demonstrated with this year’s biennale that she is in the forefront of driving a new era.
What makes this year’s biennale a must-see is the direct manner in which powerful female artists address the major challenges of the 21st century in each pavilion and art space, in a way that simultaneously, reflects emotion and intellect. The Turkish Pavilion is an especially unique and exquisitely curated space with miniature wire sculpture art by 85-year-old Fusun Onur who pioneered conceptual art in Turkey. Each one of Onur’s pieces consists of a storyboard-style scenario with a parody-like message that one might liken to an Alice In Wonderland-motif where the artist uses cats and mice to question contemporary threats like climate change and the pandemic. Onur, much like Alemani, in an interview, said that she doesn’t know why male artists tend to be recognized before their female counterparts are. Alemani expressed that a major goal of this year’s biennale is for art to play the role “to absorb and record also the traumas and the crises that go well beyond the contemporary art world.”
One prime example of this type of art was created by Simone Leigh who garnered much deserved recognition and features as the main attraction in the U.S. Pavilion. It showcases a towering straw sculpture bust of a black woman. Alemani had originally commissioned Leigh’s work for New York City’s famed High Line Park – a green urban garden above the city’s bustle. Meanwhile, a striking and emotional artwork is on display at the Mexican Pavilion where the theme of how women and girls are viewed in patriarchal society and the topic of domestic violence is prevalent as mini-dolls are maneuvered into different heights, making it obvious what gender norms are prevalent in Latin American society – showing how women and girls have been harmed by these ‘norms’ throughout decades.
The 59th Venice Biennale has many more incredible art pavilions where numerous female artists are making social statements through the eclectic medium of contemporary art. German artist Katherina Fritsch won the 2022 Golden Lion for lifetime achievement for her Elephant sculpture that is showcased in the rotunda of the main exhibit building in the Giardini while Chilean poet, artist and filmmaker Cecilia Vicuna’s portrait of her mother’s eyes is the cover page for the Biennale catalog. What makes this work of art a social statement is that Vicuna painted the portrait while the family was in exile after the violent military coup in Chile against President Salvador Allende. Vicuna’s mother who is now 97, accompanied her to the Biennale. As Vicuna commented: “You see that her spirit is still present, so in a way that painting is like a triumph of love against dictatorship, against repression, against hatred.” And it is precisely Vicuna’s passion and the passion of the myriad of female and other artists at this year’s biennale that drives home a simple but powerful message – the world is our stage and it is up to us, what we will do with it.
