Already at Arlanda, I receive a text message that the Israeli artist Ruth Patir has chosen not to open Israel’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale. On the flight I meet two friends who ask: have you heard about the Israeli pavilion? When we stop over in Munich, a woman tells the three packed men behind us that the Israeli pavilion is now closed. And when we’re about to get on the next flight, a friend shows me a video from Venice, the waves crashing dramatically onto land.
The first thing I attend at the biennale is a press conference. Outside, a small demonstration for Palestine is taking place. In retrospect, I can regret even listening to the press conference, in the same way that being at press screenings that are a little too self-aware can feel redundant.
It is the biennale’s chairman, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, who opens with a charismatic but empty speech: In times of war! Is it necessary! To gather! Unite! To face the catastrophe! He uses various metaphors, including the Italian ice cream, to illustrate the unifying potential of the biennale.
Photo: Ikram Abdulkadir
The title this year is “Foreigners everywhere”, i.e. “Strangers everywhere”. On the one hand we are always surrounded by strangers, on the other hand we will always be strangers within ourselves, explains the Brazilian and Latin America’s first artistic director Adriano Pedrosa. Nowhere is there such a large representation of artists as here, he says.
And of course there is a great diversity at the biennale, at the same time I feel that there is a limited artistic one.
Because a large part of the main exhibition consists of paintings, and I have to say that it tires me after a while. Of all the works attached to the walls, it is the textiles that occupy me the most. Many of the artists work with large pieces of fabric that turn into scenes from which reality – or fairy tale, drama and myth – is created through the sewing needle and embroidery. Like the female collective Bordadoras de Isla Negra from Chile, which depicts the work in a port.
When I catch sight of Palestinian artist Dana Awartani’s silk fabrics hanging from the ceiling in yellow and red, like something very fragile, the room takes on another dimension, a sensitivity, an enveloping warm, if thin, tone.
What I’m looking for is a spatial transformation. For that reason, I move towards installations and moving visual works. The video works often enter into dialogue with history, the present and sometimes even what is to come, something that places them in a context and at the same time challenges it. Like Brazilian Manauara Clandestina who, through archival images, photographs, news and SMS conversations, manage to intertwine and capture several spheres and stories in one work at the same time.
Our Minister of Culture Parisa Liljestrand was also in Venice to give a speech during the opening of the Nordic Pavilion. The double standards stand up in my throat when she talks about the importance of art and culture, while at the same time the cultural budget is greatly reduced. So far, Liljestrand has only signaled that art is not at all a priority “in these times”. But when she chooses not to mention the razing of Palestinian cultural heritage and only talks about the horrific destruction of Ukrainian cultural heritage, I lose it. It’s so heartless.
A few hours later, a poetry reading for Palestine is organized next to one of all the bridges. We just sit there in the sun and in the wind and listen. We are not many, but we are there. And while the men talk about art as a unifying force and while our culture minister actively ignores Palestine, I think about the importance of seeing the tear through art. Because I would rather be at an art biennale filled with conflict, than a biennale driven by a provocative belief in art as a unifying force.
Donia Saleh is a writer and critic, and the first recipient of Ingela Lind’s prize for a young culture and art writer
Read more: Donia Saleh first to receive Ingela Lind’s prize
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