The Brooklyn Rail

There is no place quite like Venice for imagining stories. The crazy impossibility of the city itself engenders thoughts of the characters who built it and the lives they might have lived. Equal parts strength and vulnerability, the stone, and bricks and wood pylons surviving nearly unchanged, while centuries of footsteps have wandered along its narrow streets.

I attended my first Biennale in 1980, many years before I began writing fiction. I’ve gone to dozens over the years, always visiting during the opening week, filled with artists, curators, collectors, and art writers. And because I was accompanying one of those writers—my husband—I experienced them as an outside observer, at times deeply moved and often confounded by what I saw.

This year, we arrived later, in the quiet after the opening days. I decided to give myself the challenge to try and understand why, over all these years, only a handful of exhibits have left lasting impressions on me, or changed my view of the times we live in. After all, the curators have chosen carefully, the artists bring their “A” game to Venice. This year’s theme, “Foreigners Everywhere” intrigued me and seemed important and timely.

But I also wondered about the choice—not of the concept, but of the wording. Foreigners. Lump that word together with Strangers, Aliens, Immigrants. Words used today to divide people and instill fear of “the other.” A provocative choice, to be sure. I thought of the famous 1955 exhibition at MoMA, The Family of Man (before I was born, but the catalogue sat on my family’s coffee table for years, a dog-eared statement of my mother’s belief system). An exhibition meant to heal the world after WWII. What sea change would this Biennale illustrate?

One of the first concepts a fiction writer must come to terms with is “showing, not telling.” For example, “Sophie was so afraid when she saw the ugly monster” as opposed to “Sophie’s limbs went numb as she spied the pointed fangs protruding from the hideous creature’s drooling mouth.” One must also avoid the treacherous “info-dump” which only betrays a writer’s lack of creative mastery over their story. One of my current pet peeves is the tendency of some curators to “explain” a work of art in the wall labels, and to tell people what and how to feel when looking at the work in front of them. It is the equivalent of “telling” and “info-dumping.” Let the work stand on its own, enhanced by contextual information but not replaced by it. Respect the viewer experience. Unfortunately, I read lots of heavy-handed explainations on wall texts this year.

I make it a point to save the texts for after I’ve absorbed what I’m looking at. I enjoy puzzling it out, trying to understand mysterious and enigmatic art, and to achieve the satisfaction of the “aha” moment. Lots of art is difficult, perplexing. Sometimes I don’t get it, nothing resonates. But too many times at this Biennale, I thought I’d understood a piece, only to be contradicted by the wall text. Many seemed as though they’d been written without regard to the actual work. Rather, they were an exposition on the “Foreigners Everywhere” theme and could have been next to any of the artworks. Even the vocabulary was repetitive; if you’d read one, you’d read them all. However, the works that stood out defied this tendency.

Approaching the German Pavilion, (blissfully, without having to stand in line!) I saw that the front door was blocked by a large mound of grey dirt, spilling down the steps. Was the entire building filled? I wondered. We were directed to the side entrance where the first thing I came upon was a very cool installation of a space ship, beautifully crafted and hovering just overhead, in a darkened space, with eerie changing light emanating from it. I thought, who are the Foreigners here? Space aliens coming to Earth? Or Earthlings seeking a new world where they would be foreigners? Around the corner, a couple of videos played, one an interview with a scholar explaining the Jewish concept tikkun olam, which means “to repair the world.” Painfully ironic given today’s headlines, but deeply meaningful when paired with the spaceship; who is leaving and what world will they build? Is the world so damaged they must leave?

Moving through the building, viewers entered a series of rooms, containing depressing vestiges of a life abandoned in some post-apocalyptic world. A story unfolded; a catastrophe befallen a life, perhaps an entire civilization, a world needing repair.

Reading the wall text provided more information about the artists, Yael Bartana and Ersan Mondtag, and framed the pieces in the context of their biographies. But the narratives of the installations were compelling enough.

Steps away, a simple installation in the Korean Pavilion focused on scent. Having seen some interesting exhibitions lately of work by Korean artists, I was expecting something thought provoking. In one room, the artist Koo Jeong placed a circular wooden form on the floor, that apparently emitted a very particular mixture of Korean smells. My nose could discern none. But in the next room, she placed a large, child-like, cartoonish figure, done in a shiny black material, leaping or dancing naked above a five-foot-high pedestal. The character’s arms outstretched over its huge head, fingers making V signs, while every minute or so a puff of pleasant scent-filled vapor emanated from its nostrils. The room itself is almost a cube, the bottom half painted a soft blue/green, the top half white, with clearstory windows running around it, letting in light. It was such a gentle work, odd and sweet, the figure a bit of an “everychild,” and the idea that scent can pass through the air, ignoring borders was simply portrayed.

The US Pavilion was given to artist Jeffery Gibson this year. Strong color covered every surface, inside and out. Consisting of free-standing figures, objects, beadwork and lots of geometric patterns. Sometimes the forms presented simplified letters, and after gazing at them for a few beats, one could read short phrases. Without knowing very much at all about Gibson’s work, I appreciated the clarity of his idea. Like walking through a finely edited short story, I understood who the main character was from the get-go. And most Americans can empathize with the feeling of their heritage and identity mixing past and present, sometimes painfully, but often joyously.

After having been through the Giardini and nearly half of the Arsenale, it was going to take something special to catch my attention. The Benin Pavilion stopped me in my tracks. The first thing I noticed was a banner high up near the ceiling with the Yoruba phrase “E-Gue-le-de…Everything Precious is Fragile” We are in Venice, at a time of great tension in the world. How perfect.

A newcomer to the Biennale, Benin presented the works of four artists.The central object—by Romuald Hazoumè—was a large dome-like structure (perhaps a dwelling or a makeshift storage space) made of recycled industrial materials. There were some beautiful figurative paintings by Moufouli Bello, and a large, arresting photo of Benin women carrying military weapons by Ishola Akpo. The fourth piece—by Chloé Quenum—was a large paned window, which mirrored exactly the existing window in the Arsenale wall (like twins staring at each other) along with various blown glass objects, mingled together in the space between them. Each work stood on its own, but as a group they told me a story of Benin now, as a place healing from the brutality of the past. Fragility. But also a story of creative resilience. And here, the wall text made sense, informed, and had a reason for being:

Activists of all convictions in their fervent efforts to enforce emotional truths often lead to polarization and absurdity. Our overwhelming influx of (mis)information fails to foster genuine understanding. Emotional truths require subtlety and allure. Amidst the clamour for decolonization through activism, “Everything Precious is Fragile” seeks to inspire nuanced gestures and artistry. The idea that profound wisdom is beautiful, fragile and deserves nurturing is an invitation, similar to Stendahl’s concept of crystallization.

Though I knew who Stendahl was, I admit I had to look up his concept of “crystallization.” Simply put, it is the process by which the lover attributes all sorts of shimmering perfection to the beloved. The text confirmed for me what I had intuited from the four artworks, powerful in their juxtapositions; an almost romantic ideal of how humans can come to terms with—and love—their own complicated nature.

Farther afield in Venice, we found the Nigerian Pavilion, hidden away, far from the usual touristed areas. Several artists were represented, including a room of exquisite paintings by Toyin Ojih Odutola, a gorgeous ceiling painting by Tunji Adeniyi-Jones that, being in Venice, needed no explanation, and an installation by Yinka Shonibare CBE consisting of a large pyramid-like structure covered with dozens of ceramic reproductions of classical Nigerian art entitled Monument to the Restitution of the Mind and Soul. Again, no explanation needed.

I suppose artists often identify themselves as outsiders, “the other.” In this way, the Biennale felt like many in the past. I learned that a significant number of these artists no longer live in the country they are representing, some never lived there. Foreigners themselves. When I think of fictional characters this notion is a common thread. It makes for interesting journeys and powerful metamorphoses. The artists who created the most powerful works in this Biennale understand this so keenly that it is embodied in the work.

Walking through Venice requires no wall labels. It shows you itself. Its past. Its present. It leaves you to imagine its future. Like a great work of art can do, if it’s left to do that.