Notizie dal Padiglione della Svizzera

 

Details of the Swiss Pavilion exhibition at the Biennale Arte 2022 revealed

For the Biennale Arte 2022, the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia appointed artist Latifa Echakhch to represent Switzerland. In collaboration with percussionist and composer Alexandre Babel and curator Francesco Stocchi, artist Latifa Echakhch conceived and realized the exhibition titled The Concert​.

The exhibition plays with harmonies and dissonances, with the mixed feelings of expectation, fulfilment and disappearance. The sculptures are part of an orchestrated and enveloping experience, a rhythmic and spatial proposal that allows viewers to experience a fuller perception of time and of their own body.  

Novità dal Padiglione UAE

 

The National Pavilion UAE’s upcoming exhibition at the Biennale Arte 2022 titled Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim: Between Sunrise and Sunset will present a new body of work for the National Pavilion UAE, an installation of human-sized, abstract and organic sculptural forms by veteran Emirati artist, Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim. Curated by Maya Allison, the work draws from Ibrahim’s deep connection to the local environment of his hometown, Khor Fakkan – a city harbouring the rocky Al Hajar mountains on the east coast of the Emirate of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates.

 The 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia will be curated by New York based Italian curator and artistic director Cecilia Alemani under the theme, The Milk of Dreams, which questions the representation of bodies and their metamorphoses, and the connection between bodies and earth. In resonance with this theme Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim’s biomorphic sculptures cluster in undulating color and movement – suggesting bodies, mutation, and metamorphosis.

 
The exhibition marks Ibrahim and Allison’s fifth collaboration together and the third book that Allison has worked on that studies Ibrahim’s work. The exhibition’s accompanying publication, Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim: Between Sunrise and Sunset / Works: 1986-2022, is the first monograph of Ibrahim’s work. It is co-edited by Maya Allison and Cristiana de Marchi and includes commissioned new texts that comprehensively explore Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim’s work, representing a major contribution to the UAE’s art history, documenting and archiving part of the country’s long-standing experimental art community.
 
Key dates - Biennale Arte 2022:
National Pavilion UAE’s exhibition inauguration: 20 April 2022 at 11 AM
Preview days: 20 – 22 April 2022
Public opening: 23 April – 27 November 2022

Passage, the National Pavilion UAE’s well-received exhibition at the 58th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia 2019, created by Nujoom Alghanem and curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, will be presented as part of Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Festival exhibition, Portrait of a Nation II, from 21^st  January 2022 – 16^th April 2022 at Manarat Al Saadiyat. This presentation follows the exhibition’s first show in the UAE at Abu Dhabi Art in November 2021.
 
Passage expands Alghanem’s experimentation with contemporary Arabic poetry through the language of film. Taking her quintessential 2009 poem, The Passerby Collects the Moonlight, as a point of departure, this installation explores the universal experience of displacement.

Notizie dal Padiglione Grecia

 

Loukia Alavanou, On The Way to Colonus, VR360, 2020, stills © Loukia Alavanou

In "Oedipus In Search Of Colonus", Greek artist Loukia Alavanou translates the plot of Sophocles' last, nearly 2,500-year-old drama "Oedipus in Colonus" into the present in the form of a 360-degree VR film. The artist asked members from a Roma community living in a shantytown just outside modern-day Athens, to act out the plot of the ancient drama in this VR film. At the end of his life, Oedipus, infamous for his cruel deeds and expelled from the city of Thebes, comes to Colonus to die. For the first time he wants to defy the will of the gods who have determined his whole tragic destiny. Against their resistance, he chooses Colonus, a sacred place dedicated to the gods, to die.

 Similarly, the Roma living today in the west of Athens, not far from the historical Colonus, revolt against their fate. For the often stateless nomads are denied the right to be buried in a cemetery near their last place of residence by the Greek authorities. A journey through time from Sophocles' two-and-a-half-thousand-year-old drama to the social ills of today, explicitly political and yet firmly anchored in the cultural history of the artists' homeland.

 The exhibition is curated by Heinz Peter Schwerfel, a specialist in the art of the moving image.

Shubigi Rao per Singapore

 Shubigi Rao con l'opera "Pulp III: A Short Biography of the Banished Book" realizzerà il Padiglione di Singapore all'Arsenale.

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MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARTIST SHUBIGI RAO AND CURATOR UTE META BAUER TO REPRESENT SINGAPORE AT THE 59TH INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION OF LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA

Singapore to participate for the 10th time at the International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia following a one-year postponement due to COVID-19

First female artist-curator team to represent Singapore at the oldest and most prestigious International Art Exhibition

Singapore, 26 July 2021 – The National Arts Council, Singapore (NAC) is pleased to announce the appointment of artist Shubigi Rao and curator Ute Meta Bauer, as the artistic team for the Singapore Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, from 23 April to 27 November 2022.

Shubigi Rao and Ute Meta Bauer were selected by a Commissioning Panel convened by NAC which comprised leaders in the local arts community. Following a rigorous nomination process, artists and curators go through a considered evaluation based on established criteria including the artistic strength and proposed vision for the showcase.

This year’s panel was led by Co-Chairs Rosa Daniel, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NAC, and Ahmad Mashadi, Head of NUS Museum. Ahmad Mashadi spoke of the recommendation, “The Commissioning Panel is convinced by the proposal presented by Shubigi Rao and Ute Meta Bauer, from its concepts to proposed articulations. It has a universal appeal and ability to connect with diverse cultural contexts, having been developed by the artist over her long practice across many locations. Both Rao and Bauer have exceptional records of practice one can describe to be global, but critically grounded to Singapore. Their approaches run alongside their capacities as educators, and we are confident that their efforts for the Biennale Arte can serve as a valuable reference to successive generations of artists and curators in Singapore. These are considerations that informed our recommendation for the artistic team.”

Commenting on the significance of this edition’s selection, Rosa Daniel (CEO of NAC) stated, “This is an exciting milestone for Singapore’s multicultural visual and literary arts scene. The pandemic has reminded us how art is essential to our wellbeing, and the news of the resumption of international biennales such as the International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia has been enthusiastically received by everyone in the arts community. NAC is committed to sustaining Singapore’s arts, and a key part of our plans has been to help our artists connect to the international scene and project a different side of Singapore on the global stage. As commissioner of the Singapore Pavilion at this international platform, the Council looks forward to celebrating the work of Singapore’s best with the rest of the contemporary art world.”

Shubigi Rao is an award-winning multidisciplinary Singaporean artist who has exhibited widely in international biennales and institutions around the world and won accolades for both her visual art practice and literary works. Rao has also been featured in March Meets 2019, 4th Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2018), 10th Taipei Biennial, (2016); 3rd Pune Biennale (2017), Digital Arts Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark (2013); and 2nd Singapore Biennale (2008). Most recently, she was invited to the upcoming 10th edition (2021/2022) of the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Australia. Rao is the curator of the upcoming 5th Kochi-Muziris Biennale, South Asia's biggest visual arts event.

As an artist, Rao’s films, art, texts, and photographs have critically, poetically and humorously engaged with systems of knowledge that structure our world. Since 2014, she has been visiting public and private collections, libraries and archives globally for Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book, a decade-long film, book and visual art project about the history of book destruction. In 2020, the second book from the project won the Singapore Literature Prize (non-fiction), while the first volume was shortlisted in 2018. Both books have won numerous awards, including AIGA (New York)’s 50 best books of 2016 and 2019. The first exhibition of the project, Written in the Margins, won the APB Signature Prize 2018 Juror's Choice Award.

Ute Meta Bauer is the Founding Director of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (CCA), a renowned institution in Southeast Asia that bridges academia and artistic research, and a professor at the Nanyang Technological University School of Art, Design and Media (NTU ADM). She has been a curator for three decades of numerous exhibitions on contemporary art, film, video, and sound, connecting artistic work with that of other disciplines. She was co-curator of documenta11 on the team of Okwui Enwezor (2001/2002) and the artistic director of the 3rd Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2004). She also co-directed the World Biennial Forum No. 1 in Gwangju, South Korea with Hou Hanru. She has been a commissioner of the Nordic Pavilion at the 50th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2003), the commissioner/curator of the Norwegian contribution for the 26th São Paulo Biennial (2004), and co-curated with Paul Ha the US Pavilion at the 56th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2015) which featured pre-eminent artist Joan Jonas, and was awarded a Honorary Mention for best National Pavilion by the Biennale’s International Jury.

The 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams, is curated by Cecilia Alemani and runs from 23 April to 27 November 2022.  Following a one-year postponement of the Biennale Arte due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this announcement marks Singapore’s 10th participation in Venice commissioned by NAC. Since 2015, the pavilion has been located within the Arsenale and has featured artists such as Song-Ming Ang (2019), Zai Kuning (2017) and Charles Lim (2015). In 2009, Ming Wong’s representation of Singapore received a Special Mention at the 53rd International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.

Art continues to provide solace during times of uncertainty. As the world gradually recovers from the pandemic, it becomes ever more important to care for societies through continued funding and support for the arts. Singapore’s participation in the 59th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia underscores this commitment by presenting Singapore arts internationally despite these challenging times.

Join the conversation with the Singapore Pavilion via Facebook and Instagram (@NACSingapore), and hashtags #SingaporeInVenice and #BiennaleArte2022. More information can be found on www.nac.gov.sg/SingaporeinVenice.

High-resolution images can be found in our digital media kit: https://bit.ly/SingaporePavilioninVenice2022.

Presentazione del progetto Il latte dei sogni della curatrice Cecilia Alemani

 News dalla Biennale di Venezia, il prossimo presenta la 59. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte "Il latte dei sogni" Mercoledì 2 febbraio 2022 alle ore 12.00 IN DIRETTA STREAMING su www.labiennale.org  e sui canali social  Facebook, Twitter, YouTube  dalla Sede della Biennale di Venezia  Ca’ Giustinian, San Marco 1364/a  Venezia

 

Intervengono

Roberto Cicutto

Presidente della Biennale di Venezia

Cecilia Alemani

Curatrice della 59. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte