03 Aug 2022

Reflections on the 59th Venice Biennale. Part 2: Delirium in the Giardini, Exhaustion in the Arsenale

by Henrietta Landells

In this bubbling forth of a kind of collective unconscious, Venice seemed renewed to me as a potent setting for the Biennale ritual gathering. Both the new commissions (alchemy on demand?) and the rediscovery of already-existing webs of knowledge and practice perhaps more easily take on a kind of ‘global’ existential resonance, when re-contextualised and re-purposed here. At the least, they suggest new alternative futures remain available, via these alternative pasts-within-the-present.
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59th Venice Biennale
24 May 2022

Reflections on the 59th Venice Biennale. Part 1: Alchemical visions, suspended in milk

by Henrietta Landells

Amidst the disorientation that follows our re-emergence from an extended period of isolation and uncertainty, curator Cecilia Alemani presents Milk of Dreams, a large-scale matriarchal gathering bringing the work of over 200 contemporary artists from 58 countries to Venice, together with works by a selection of historical female artists from the 19th century onwards.
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