“The history of art is also a history of exclusion”
From April 23 to November 27, 80% of the artists participating in the 59th edition of the event will be women. Interview with Commissioner Cecilia Alemani.
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Cecilia Alemani, curator of the Biennale, with Roberto Cicutto, president of the event, which will be held from April 23 to November 27.
EPA / Andrea Merola
The biggest risk? Let it be renamed the Women’s Biennial. But what would that mean? In 125 years, you have never called it the Men’s Biennial!” In ten weeks, Cecilia Alemani will inaugurate her Art Biennale in Venice. If we are only interested in figures, this 59th exhibition promises to be colossal: 213 artists from 58 countries, 1433 works and objects, 80 national pavilions (Cameroon, Namibia, Nepal, Oman and Uganda will debut this year) and the longest run on record, over seven months, from April 23 to November 27.
The budget exceeds 18 million Swiss francs: “The costs have increased due to the rise in the price of energy and transport”, explains the president Roberto Cicutto. “20% of the budget has already been covered by the sponsors; for the rest, we focus on revenue. One of our other goals is to reduce environmental impact. We are adopting guidelines in this regard.
But, more importantly, this year in Venice, curator Cecilia Alemani will rewrite the history of art. More than 80% of the artists invited to the event are women, or belong to a non-binary gender. Men, for the first time, are in the minority. At the Giardini and the Arsenale, five “time capsules” will be integrated into the main route: installations within installations that put female creativity back at the center of the artistic movements of the 20th century, from surrealism to kinetic and programmed art.
The title of the exhibition, ‘Il latte dei sogni’ (The milk of dreams) is taken from the children’s book by surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, who fled England for Mexico and spanned the entire 20th century. . “I chose her as my travel companion,” explains Cecilia Alemani, who is returning to the lagoon after curating the Italian pavilion in 2017. “A trip that revolves around three themes: the representation of bodies and their metamorphoses, the relationship between individuals and technologies, and the links that are woven between bodies and the Earth.”
This project seems much more ambitious than those seen in Venice in the past.
I had more time to reflect and study the thing. I was appointed in January 2020, the pandemic started in March, and the postponement of the Biennale to 2022 was decided in May. In the meantime, my initial project has grown. I started with the metamorphoses, but the exhibition was then enriched with other stratifications and meanings. The historical study, in particular, turned out to be complex, as did the production. And it’s not over yet.
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Do you really want to rewrite the history of art by ridding it of its male perspective?
I leave that to the historians. I did not invent the appreciation of female surrealism; we’ve been talking about it for years. What interests me are the voices that are considered somewhat minor. For the first time, 180 women or non-binary artists will be at the Biennale. I am thinking of Dadamaino, of Nanda Vigo, representatives of programmed and kinetic art who did not appear alongside their male colleagues at the 1966 Biennale. I am thinking of the women of the Bauhaus, of the Dada movement. I didn’t make any major discoveries, but since I simply didn’t want to isolate women artists, I took them up and put them in contact with the contemporary artists they influenced.
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Let’s be clear: men will be in the minority this year.
During the first hundred years of the Biennale’s history, the female presence barely reached 10%. Over the past twenty years, it has risen to 30%. It’s sad to say, but even in a revolutionary edition like that of Harald Szeemann (note: Swiss exhibition curator who was notably curator of the Kunsthaus in Zurich), in 2001, women represented only 20% of the participants. The history of art is also a history of exclusion.
But the aim of this Biennial is not to confront man. Some women artists defend themselves very well on their own. The idea, on the contrary, is to go beyond this male/female dualism which matters little to artists. This is an exhibition on the post-human. I did not exclude men a priori; I chose them when their work was articulated in a congruent way with the path I had in mind. In the historical capsules, on the other hand, the idea was to give back space to stories considered to be minor. For surrealism, it wouldn’t have made sense to include Dalí or Magritte.
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–Bridget Tichenor, “The Wait”
DR
Aren’t you afraid of the risk of political correctness?
That’s not why I chose more women, but I’m sure some will think so. It would have been more politically correct to go 50/50. And in any case, the exhibited works will have nothing politically correct about them. They will be less canonical, and there will be no shortage of provocation. In the end, what matters is what we will see.
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What objective does your Biennale not want to miss?
I think especially of visitors. It’s a legacy that comes to me from my experience as director of the High Line in New York, through which 8 million people pass. I would like them to be able to see a major exhibition, as there hasn’t been for two years. I would like the focus to be on contemporaries: 80 productions will be totally new. I would like the works of yesterday to be able to tell lesser-known stories, stories that have nevertheless influenced what we watch today. A Biennale is not just the exhibition of the status quo.
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This edition will bring together artists from 58 nations, a record. Yet you haven’t been able to travel much because of the pandemic. How do you choose works of art via Zoom?
I had a group of advisers in parts of the world where I did not go in person. I couldn’t go to Japan, India, China. I was also looking in these countries for artists who coincided with my background. From my apartment in New York, I had the opportunity to meet hundreds of artists via Zoom. I was also treated to very intimate conversations, marked by a strange feeling of the end of the world. This dialogue gave rise to many questions about the situation. How is the definition of human being changing? What differentiates plant, animal, human and non-human? What are our responsibilities to our fellow human beings, other life forms and the planet we inhabit? And what would life be without us? This is where the exhibition was born.
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–Paula Rego, «Sleeper».
DR
Popular and commercial names are missing.
It wasn’t necessarily a conscious choice. I focused on artists who have all the assets to be more commercial, but who, as surprising as it may seem, had never participated in the Biennale.
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What is the greatest risk run by your Biennale?
Let’s only talk about the prevalence of women. It would be like minimizing things. It is an exhibition of such magnitude, which tells different stories through a plurality and a chorality of voices. Without forgetting the practical risks linked to the world situation: transport blockages, untraceable papers… I would like to make sure that the works arrive safe and sound at the Giardini and the Arsenale.
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