All posts tagged: Venice

Thomas Rom On His Top Exhibitions in Venice for the Biennale This Year

Thomas Rom On His Top Exhibitions in Venice for the Biennale This Year

Published by Jenni Sidey

This year’s Venice Biennale vernissage week brought more than the usual round of openings for art adviser and Performance Space New York board chair Thomas Rom, as the institution’s Visionaries Circle co-hosted a performance by theater impresario-turned-artist Jordan Roth at Palazzo dei Fiori. We asked Rom to share his reflections on everything he saw in La Serenissima—from the Biennale’s main exhibition, “In Minor Keys,” to quieter collateral shows, like Kan Yasuda’s “Isole del Silenzio.” What follows are his observations, lightly edited for clarity. It is said that Venice is the place where one goes to lose oneself elegantly. I have always found it to be the place where I go to find my friends, while ideally keeping a certain degree of elegance intact. In May I arrived at the Biennale opening week with that exact objective in mind, leading a group of patrons, collectors, and artists on behalf of Performance Space New York’s Visionaries Circle through the canals, islands, and palazzos of Venice in search of inspiration, beauty, and connection. Venice, as ever, rewarded the …

Venice Biennale Artists Threaten Legal Action Against Organizers

Venice Biennale Artists Threaten Legal Action Against Organizers

Published by Jenni Sidey

More than 100 artists are threatening legal action against the Venice Biennale Foundation for ignoring their demands that the foundation withdraw their names from consideration for the “Visitors’ Lion” awards at the current edition over the inclusion of national pavilions by Israel and Russia. The threat is included in a new announcement published on e-flux. A May 20 letter addressed to the foundation and its president, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, is published in the announcement. It is signed by some 67 artists whose work appears in curator Koyo Kouoh’s exhibition “In Minor Keys,” including prominent figures like Laurie Anderson, Alfredo Jaar, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, and Walid Raad. Also among the signatories are 39 artists representing their countries, including Denmark (Maja Malou Lyse, Chus Martínez, and Commons Accounts), Britain’s Lubaina Himid, and Austria’s Florentina Holzinger, all among the star national pavilions. Related Articles Kouoh died suddenly in May 2025. The Biennale announced the jury, invited by Kouoh and led by president Solange Oliveira Farkas, founding artistic director of the Videobrasil Biennial, this past April; its job is normally …

After Venice, Florentina Holzinger Brings a 9-Hour Performance to Vienna

After Venice, Florentina Holzinger Brings a 9-Hour Performance to Vienna

Published by Jenni Sidey

At this year’s Venice Biennale, the performance artist and choreographer Florentina Holzinger used the stage of the Austria Pavilion to alert viewers to an increasingly underwater dystopia. Seaworld Venice issued a dire warning of the flood to come: an underwater amusement park and a circling jet-ski signaled ecological catastrophe driven by turbo-tourism, while a group of performers climbed an enormous weathervane as a testament to the strength of collective action, and a performer lived in a reconstructed sewer treatment plant, in a tank sustained by body fluids contributed by the audience.⁠ Related Articles It was, certainly, among the most talked about pavilions at this year’s Biennale. On May 23, still sopping from seaworld, Holzinger opened “Pfingstspiel” (Pentecost Play), at Hermann Nitsch’s castle in Prinzendorf an der Zaya near Vienna. The 9-hour, one-time performance—created in collaboration with the Wiener Festwochen arts festival and the Nitsch Foundation—served as a complement to her Venice work. Nitsch, who died in 2022, is often thought of as the father of the 1960s radical performance art movement Viennese Actionism, whose ethos …

Inside Belarus Free Theatre’s Venice Exhibition on Authoritarianism

Inside Belarus Free Theatre’s Venice Exhibition on Authoritarianism

Published by Jenni Sidey

When the Belarus Free Theatre opened “Official. Unofficial. Belarus.” at La Chiesa di San Giovanni Evangelista di Venezia earlier this month, it marked the first time Belarus had a presence at the Venice Biennale in six years—and the first time it appeared there not as a state, but, as curator Daniella Kaliada put it, as “a self-governing, self-authored cultural body.” The distinction matters enormously. Belarus has only appeared at the Biennale a handful of times, and not since President Alexander Lukashenko’s brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in 2020. In exile since those protests, the Belarus Free Theatre has been at the forefront of efforts to counter the dictatorial Lukashenko regime and telling the country’s story on the international stage. In Venice, the Theatre translates its approach to visual art, stepping away from the plays and theater productions that have become its calling card, to stage an exhibition featuring Belarusian artists working across painting, installations, and large-scale sculptures. The aim is to make the experience of living under authoritarianism viscerally legible—not just visible. “We didn’t want …

Open Letter Decries ‘Censorship’ of Kazakh Artist at Venice Biennale

Open Letter Decries ‘Censorship’ of Kazakh Artist at Venice Biennale

Published by Jenni Sidey

Controversy has once again reached the Venice Biennale, this time at the Kazakhstan pavilion, where artist Äsel Kadyrhanova’s presentation was reportedly dismantled prior to the exhibition’s opening. The fallout has left fractures within the Kazakhstani art community and among the pavilion’s organizers in Venice, with conflicting accounts emerging over who ordered the work’s removal and why. The news emerged in a May 21 open letter signed by prominent members of the Kazakhstani art community and published on e-flux. The letter alleges that Äsel Kadyrhanova’s multimedia installation Machine (2013)—a meditation on Stalin-era repression in Kazakhstan—was dismantled on May 5 on the orders of the nation’s Ministry of Culture, or by individuals acting on behalf of the pavilion’s organizers, after negotiations between Kadyrhanova and the pavilion’s curator, Syrlybek Bekbota, failed. Related Articles In a May 11 article published by the Kazakh media outlet Vlast, titled “Kazakhstan’s Ministry Removes Kadyrkhanova’s Work from the Venice Biennale,” representatives of the Museo Storico Navale di Venezia, the Italian Navy–affiliated museum hosting the exhibition, denied any role in the work’s removal. D’Uva, …

How the Venice Biennale became Russia’s way back into Europe – POLITICO

How the Venice Biennale became Russia’s way back into Europe – POLITICO

Published by Sam Flores

Featuring giant floral installations and various musical performances, Russia’s exhibit was one of the most politically explosive in years, drawing politicians, artists, dissidents and European institutions into an increasingly bitter clash over culture, propaganda and freedom of expression. Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini personally visited the pavilion during the pre-opening days. “Art has no borders, no censorship, no gag,” he said. “Culture and sport should remain neutral spaces and places of encounter.” But for critics of Russia’s participation, Russia’s display was less about artistic freedom than an attempt to regain international legitimacy after the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. A Ukrainian protester is pictured in front of the closed Russian pavilion on the day of the Biennale’s official opening to the public. | Martina Sapio/POLITICO “The presence of Russia at the Biennale is an attempt to normalize the war,” said Ksenia Malykh, curator of the Ukrainian pavilion, which had its central installation — a deer statue called “Security Guarantees” — installed within sight of the Russia’s building. These concerns had already triggered …

Amanda Heng creates space for rest at Venice Biennale: ‘Find a moment for yourself’

Amanda Heng creates space for rest at Venice Biennale: ‘Find a moment for yourself’

Published by Sam Flores

A significant figure in the contemporary arts scene of Singapore since the 1980s, Heng is a Cultural Medallion recipient who has had her work featured in major biennales and art festivals. Most recently, she was included in the all-women group show Fear No Power: Women Imagining Otherwise at the National Gallery Singapore, which runs until November. From walking a pet stool down the street to setting up a table to encourage people to have conversations while plucking beansprout, Heng’s body-centric practice spans nearly four decades.  These two, titled Walking The Stool and Let’s Chat respectively, are among her well-known performance pieces. Heng uses everyday gestures and ideas to explore gender roles and societal expectations in her practice.  And it’s no different in Venice. Inspired by the city’s many bridges, Heng uses the ordinary and familiar element of their steps and her observations of people using them to create A Pause. The steps are unusually shallow – at 10cm high and from 50cm to 4m in width – and naturally slow down visitors’ movement as they …

Venice election turns into test of Meloni’s right-wing cultural revolution – POLITICO

Venice election turns into test of Meloni’s right-wing cultural revolution – POLITICO

Published by Sam Flores

Promoted by sections of the right as the symbol of a new generation ready to challenge Italy’s progressive cultural establishment, Venezi instead became a lightning rod in a broader debate over whether the government’s cultural agenda relied too heavily on political symbolism. Andrea Martella, the center-left candidate for mayor and currently an MP for the Democratic Party, argued the controversies surrounding both La Fenice and the Biennale had damaged the city’s standing. “With both, there was a short circuit between Rome and Venice which ended up humiliating the institutions,” Martella said. “In a city like Venice, this carries enormous weight, because culture is not only part of the past but also the present and future of this extraordinary community: its identity, work, prestige and capacity to attract talent.” Simone Venturini, now the center-right’s candidate for mayor, talks to the press outside Santa Lucia train station in April 2024. | Marco Bertorello/AFP via Getty Images) While Venice has become symbolically important in national politics, the center-right’s candidate for mayor and current councilor for tourism, Simone Venturini, …

The Venice Biennale and the Art Lover’s Dilemma

The Venice Biennale and the Art Lover’s Dilemma

Published by Daniella Wilson

The forced excitement accompanying each new iteration of the Venice Biennale, I’ve heard it said, is akin to a faked orgasm—at some point, it’s probably better to stop. Yet among this magical city’s spells, as the novelist Mary McCarthy once wrote, is “one of peculiar potency: the power to awaken the philistine dozing in the sceptic’s breast.” McCarthy had in mind “dry, prose people” who object to “feeling what they are supposed to feel, in the presence of marvels.” This, then, is the art lover’s dilemma whenever the Biennale comes around: Do you marshal skepticism or let the feelings flow? Whatever your preference, you’ll get a lot of practice. The Biennale, which opened last week and will remain up through November, has frequently and misleadingly been called “the Olympics of the art world”—and it’s certainly a competition of sorts (primarily for attention), but no one seems to care much about who’s winning. More accurate, it’s an everywhere-all-at-once phenomenon. You try to account for it all, but it’s virtually impossible to tell a clean story about …

Iran Pushes Back on Venice Biennale Withdrawal Reports: ‘We’re Still Coming’

Iran Pushes Back on Venice Biennale Withdrawal Reports: ‘We’re Still Coming’

Published by Jenni Sidey

Last week, the Venice Biennale announced that Iran had dropped out of the exhibition. Now, it appears, that report was incorrect. On Tuesday, Aydin Mahdizadeh Tehrani, the director-general of visual arts at the Iranian ministry of culture and Islamic guidance told the Iran Students News Agency that it still plans to participate. “Iran never withdrew from participating in the Venice Biennale,” Tehrani said, as translated by Google Translate. “Incidentally, we had the initial agreement to participate in Venice and we are still in consultation. We have submitted a plan to participate in the Biennale as an exhibition, and we will probably receive a receive a response in the next few days.” Related Articles In an extensive Q&A with ISNA, Tehrani said he was confused by the Biennale organizers’ statement after it never gave them a letter of withdrawal, nor announced that they weren’t participating. He said further that Iran’s organizers were in conversations with the Biennale to resolve several issues related to sanctions against Iran, high financial costs of renting a space for the pavilion, the …