One week before the 59th Venice Biennale was due to open this spring, Jimmy Ogonga, the curator of the Kenya Pavilion, still hadn’t received funding from Kenya’s ministry of culture. It was the second time Ogonga had staged a pavilion for his home country, taking over after two scandalous editions in 2013 and 2015 in which Kenyan artists were all but left out. Ogonga ...
Initially, Simone Leigh’s exhibition in the United States Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale was to be titled “Grittin’,” a vernacular term suggesting protective determination. Not long before the opening, Leigh changed the title to “Sovereignty.” You come to know why even before entering the stately Palladian structure, whose exterior she effectively obliterates with thatch that hangs low from the roof and a double ...
There has never been a Venice Biennale like the current one. Of its 213 artists, more than 90 percent identify as women or as gender nonconforming, a fact which has justly been celebrated. Its curator, Cecilia Alemani, has chosen to focus on Surrealism and the ways artists working today are breathing new life into it. Dotted throughout are sections devoted to Surrealism and related ...
Welcome to the Art Angle, a podcast from Artnet News that delves into the places where the art world meets the real world, bringing each week’s biggest story down to earth. Join us every week for an in-depth look at what matters most in museums, the art market, and much more, with input from our own writers and editors, as well as artists, curators, ...
Venice’s Civic Museums are sending protective fabrics, foam panels and data loggers for tracking changes in humidity and temperature to the Lviv National Art Gallery in Ukraine. The donation is part of a delivery by Save Ukraine Art 22—a network of private companies, public institutions and museums—which aims to establish a supply chain for delivering essential materials for saving art from bombs, fire and ...
The Isola di San Giacomo, a smallm, remote island off the coast of Venice, will be converted into an arts space by collector Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. It will be the third space overseen by her, after ones in Turin and the Italian town of Guarene. Last week, Re Rebaudengo revealed plans to turn the space into what her foundation labeled a “laboratory for ...
Artist and innovator Saype presents his new creation, making Venice part of his Beyond Walls global human chain. The work, which is sailing through the Serenissima on the occasion of the Biennale Art, has been unveiled on April 21.Giant biodegradable landart painting by French-Swiss artist Saype from the Beyond Walls project on Friday April 15, 2022 on a floating barge in Venice, Italy. Extending ...
For the first time, both of the Venice Biennale’s top honors went to Black women. Those awards, known as the Golden Lions, went this year to Simone Leigh and Sonia Boyce, who won for participation in Cecilia Alemani’s main show and for a national pavilion, respectively. The Silver Lion, for a “promising young artist” in the main show, went to Ali Cherri. Special mentions ...
When I arrived at the Giardini Wednesday morning for day two of the Venice Biennale preview, a significant line had already formed at the entrance, and the VIPs were unhappy: surely this was not where they belonged. Some people seemed to be walking right past us, toward some presumably more exclusive entrance. One by one, the well-heeled collectors, art advisors, and Kunsthalle directors around ...
With the preview days for the Venice Biennale having come to close, everyone is now buzzing about who will win the show’s awards. There are two main ones: one for a national pavilion, the other for a participant in the main show—plus another, the Silver Lion, for a promising young artist. The jury for the prize’s are also allowed to make one special mention ...
