Eliana Willis

The jurors of the 59th Venice Biennale awarded their highest honor to U.K. artist Sonia Boyce on Saturday morning.
Boyce accepted the Golden Lion for best national pavilion for her arresting exhibition “Feeling Her Way,” which fuses video, collage, music, and sculpture. The installation celebrates the collaborative dynamism of five Black female musicians (Poppy Ajudha, Jacqui Dankworth, Sofia Jernberg, Tanita Tikaram, and composer Errollyn Wallen) who Boyce invited to improvise together in the same studio where the Beatles recorded “Abbey Road.” The exhibition presents intimate color-tinted videos of the performers set among the artist’s signature tessellating wallpapers and golden geometric sculptures.
The Biennale’s five-person jury commended Boyce for raising “important questions of rehearsal” as opposed to perfectly tuned music, as well as for creating “relations between voices in the form of a choir in the distance.”
This Biennale marks Boyce’s second time showing in Venice, and during an emotional acceptance speech, she paid tribute to the late curator Okwui Enwezor, who recognized her work in the central exhibition he organized in 2015.
Significantly, Boyce is the first Black woman to represent the U.K. Ahead of the opening, the artist—a key member of the British Black art movement in the 1980s—told Artnet News that she was still untangling what it meant to represent her country in this context.
“Kobena Mercer wrote a great essay in 1994 called Black Art and the Burden of Representation, about how there is a responsibility placed on the shoulders of Black artists to be representatives, for them to carry the weight of all Black artists, all Black people, without any consensus,” she said. “For me, what that becomes is that it doesn’t matter what I make, somehow; because I’m there as a fragment of ‘all of them.’”
After the ceremony, Boyce told Artnet News that her collaborators’ performances were born out of a simple question: “As a woman, as a Black person, what does freedom feel like? How can you imagine freedom?”
“Sonia Boyce: Feeling Her Way” is on view at the British Pavilion in the Giardini of the 59th International Art Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia, through November 27, 2022. See images of the award-winning installation below.
Room 6 in the British Pavilion featuring performer Tanita Tirkaram, 2022. Image by Cristiano Corte © British Council.
Room 6 in the British Pavilion featuring performer Tanita Tikaram, 2022. Image by Cristiano Corte © British Council.
Room 4 in the British Pavilion featuring the Devotional Collection, 2022. Image by Cristiano Corte © British Council.
Room 3 in the British Pavilion featuring performers Jacqui Dankworth and Sofia Jernberg, 2022. Image by Cristiano Corte © British Council.
Room 1 in the British Pavilion featuring four performers – Errollyn Wallen, Tanita Tikaram, Poppy Ajudha, Jacqui Dankworth, 2022. Image by Cristiano Corte © British Council.
Room 2 in the British Pavilion featuring performer Jacqui Dankworth, 2022. Image by Cristiano Corte © British Council.
Room 1 in the British Pavilion featuring performers Jacqui Dankworth and Sofia Jernberg, 2022. Image by Cristiano Corte © British Council.
Room 3 in the British Pavilion featuring performers Jacqui Dankworth and Sofia Jernberg, 2022. Image by Cristiano Corte © British Council.

Room 5 in the British Pavilion featuring performer Poppy Ajudha. Image by Cristiano Corte © British Council.
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The crowds were packed into the Central Pavilion of the Venice Biennale in the Giardini yesterday, where the 2022 Venice Biennale’s main show, “The Milk of Dreams,” continued from the Arsenale across town.
What do I need to tell you about them, for context? Not much. As I said yesterday about the Arsenale section, it is a particularly visual show. It’s (relatively) sparing in its deployment of video. As for text-based and research works, it only really gets clotted in the mini-galleries dedicated to surveys of women working with the occult and magic (“The Witch’s Cradle”) and text and automatism (“Corps Orbite.”) But these last are, in truth, highlights, so it’s worth it to wait your turn examining their trove of interesting artifacts and anecdotes.
For a sense of what to expect, see the pictures below.
A telescope pointed at the Central Pavilion of the Giardini as part of a work by Cosima von Bonin. Photo by Ben Davis.
Work by Cosima von Bonin. Photo by Ben Davis.
Maria Prymachenko, Scarecrow (1967). Photo by Ben Davis.
Andra Ursuţa, Impersonal Growth (2020). Photo by Ben Davis.
A wall of works by Rosemarie Trockel. Photo by Ben Davis.
Works by Kudzanai-Violet Hwami. Photo by Ben Davis.
Works by Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill. Photo by Ben Davis.
Cecilia Vicuña, NAUfraga (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.
Cecilia Vicuña, Bendigame Mamita (1977). Photo by Ben Davis.
Works by Merikokeb Berhanu. Photo by Ben Davis.
Mrinalini Mukherjee, Devi (1982), Rudra (1982), and Vanshree (1994). Photo by Ben Davis.
Simone Fattal, Adam and Eve (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Visitors in the “Corps Orbite” gallery, a special display of works by artists working in concrete poetry and text. Photo by Ben Davis.
Works by Unica Zürn. Photo by Ben Davis.
Works by Chiara Enzo. Photo by Ben Davis.
Works by Ovartaci. Photo by Ben Davis.
Nan Goldin, Sirens (2019–21). Photo by Ben Davis. More

The Roma people of Europe have long been disenfranchised, discriminated against, and excluded from public life—and their experiences in the art world have been no exception. That’s why it’s especially profound and urgent that not one, but two pavilions at the 2022 Venice Biennale deal directly with Romani experiences.
At the Polish Pavilion, artist Małgorzta Mirga-Tas has become the first Roma artist ever to take over a national biennale pavilion in the show’s 150-year history. And at the Greek pavilion, a surrealist VR film by Greek artist Loukia Alavanou transports viewers through a Roma settlement outside of Athens.
“It’s truly a historical moment,” said Polish pavilion co-curator Joanna Warsza at the unveiling of the presentation.
Mirga-Tas’s exhibition, “Re-enchanting the World,” is a triumphant celebration of Roma life and history. Massive and vividly colored fabric and hand-stiched panels adorn the majestic exterior of the pavilion as the floor to ceiling inside are filled work images.
Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Re-enchanting the World, exhibition view, Polish Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2022. Photo: Daniel Rumiancew. Images courtesy Zachęta — National Gallery of Art
The three tiers of panels represent 500-year old frescos at Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara, Italy. Mirga-Tas reinterprets this historic format to focus on her own people, who are almost entirely absent from Western art.
She included on the upper panel depictions of Roma migrations across Europe, appropriating some image of Roma people that did make it into art history: disparaging images made by printmaker Jacques Callot in the 17th century. She transforms these into truthful and poignant celebrations of the nomadic Romanis’ diasporic history.
“For much of history, we never created images of ourselves,” Mirga-Tassaid. “It is very symbolic for me. It is not only about me as a Polish-based Roma artist, but it is about my whole community. I am here as a representative.”
She made the works with reused garments and the help of family members and women in her community of Czarna Góra, a village at the foot of the Tatra Mountains in Poland.
“We have had to deal with stereotypes about what Roma artists are and where Roma artists are entitled to display their work,” Warcaw said at the unveiling. “This is about pride in the concept of being a Roma human being.”
Loukia Alavanou “On The Way to Colonus,” VR360, 2020 stills. © Loukia Alavano
At the nearby Greek pavilion, Alavanou’s show, “Oedipus in Search of Colonus,” tries to bring viewers into proximity with Romani experience with an entirely different aesthetic and tone.
The powerful VR presentation, curated by Heinz Peter Schwerfel, juxtaposes Greek classical mythology with the realities of life for Roma. It also offers an unusually intimate interaction.
The artist, who is not of Roma descent, transformed the normally bright pavilion into a cavernous domed room with more than a dozen VR headsets. The 16-minute film drops viewers into a Roma settlement in Athens called Neo Zoi, which translates to new life. Despite the town’s name, the people in it live in impoverished conditions. It was settled after World War II by Romanis who had survived the Nazi’s brutal persecution.
Loukia Alavanou’s On The Way to Colonus (2020), stills. © Loukia Alavano
“It was a complete coincidence that I found Neo Zoi,” Alavanou said. “It changed my life.”
Though it has been there for decades, it is virtually unknown to Greeks like her who live just 20 kilometers away.
Using this setting, Alavanou reinterprets the Sophoclean drama Oedipus at Colonus using a cast of amateur local Roma actors. The actors recreate the story of the exile of Oedipus and how it raises questions regarding belonging, life, and death.
Loukia Alavanou. Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia Photo: Jacopo Salvi
The VR pans through the settlement, making viewers into eyewitnesses of a modern-day Oedipus and Antigone, played by two amateur Roma actors. Children from the settlement don Greek chorus-like masks, which Alavanou incporprates convincingly using high-tech immersive video and surreal imagery.
“‘Oedipus in Seach of Colonus’ may be a journey through time from the past to the present,” Schwerfel, the curator, said. “But that journey is also a carousel that rotates around its own axis by definition, just like art.”
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The German artist Niclas Castello, who made his name when he plunked a 400-pound cube made of nearly $12 million worth of gold in the middle of Central Park in February, is now showing the 24-karat sculpture at the Ca’di Dio Hotel in Venice in a quick appearance until 8:00 pm CET today, April 21.
Alongside its Venetian debut, the physical bling is accompanied by a cryptocurrency, Castello Coin ($CAST), which launched earlier this week on the Bittrex exchange. The coin is currently trading at about $.16 USD, backed by the Swiss private equity firm HoGA Capital. 
“The Coin acts as a bridge between the traditional world of finance… and the new world, the world of cryptocurrencies and the digital age,” according to a statement from the artist.
The Castello Cube getting offboarded for show in Venice. Photo: Sandra Small.
“It’s the first project to be funded in such a manner, meant to act as a catalyst between a physical art work and a crypto-currency,” he added. “We want everyone to experience it first-hand.” 
Set against the backdrop of the oldest and most important biennale in the world, the Castello Cube has predictably drawn the attention of many onlookers, including the art-world denizen and meme-lord Jerry Gogosian, who made several memes of the first iteration of the work in Central Park. 
“The cube feels like a zombie love child between Donald Judd and Andy Warhol, an uneasy reminder of just how financialized contemporary art has become,” Gogosian told Artnet News.
Others, however, seemed genuinely intrigued by the cube’s relationship to crypto, and the newfound potential of art works that live both on and offline. 
Niclas Castello with the Castello Cube. Photo: Sandra Small.
“The cube plays with the juxtaposition between tangible and intangible assets,” said curator Aleksandra Artamonovskaja, who founded the NFT and crypto-art advisory firm Electric Artefacts. “It effectively seizes the memes of production, which I think is important in staging any successful drop.” 
Cast in a foundry in Aarau, Switzerland, the Castello Cube became a meme sensation after its 12-hour public display in Central Park this past February, eventually leading to a skit on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah. 
A romp through La Serenissima seems apt. In Venice, among the gently swaying gilded gondolas and miraculously ornate fixtures of gold leaf inside St. Mark’s Basilica, the everlasting bond between the city and gold goes back centuries. The Castello Cube, in all its newfound radiance, seems to exemplify Venice’s unending preoccupation for all that glitters.
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In one ear and out the other. That’s what you get with the Brazilian pavilion at the Venice Biennale, where you literally walk through two ear-doors to experience the work, which presents a somewhat oblique critique of the country’s contemporary sociopolitical landscape.
Artist Jonathas de Andrade has created a playful pavilion that draws on a system of more than 250 Brazilian idiomatic expressions relating to the body. Titled “Com o coração saindo pela boca (With the heart coming out of the mouth),” it includes sculptures, photographs, and a video installation that take these expressions as their points of departure. 
“They are metaphors that resonate with what we are experiencing politically and socially in Brazil right now,” De Andrade told Artnet News. “It speaks to the political temperature of the unfolding disasters: the Amazon, the human rights, the vaccine denial, and so on.”
In the first room, a rotten finger repeatedly presses the wrong button on an electronic ballot box, taken from an expression referring to someone who contaminates whatever he or she touches, and an unavoidable evocation of the widespread political corruption in Brazil under its right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro.
Installation view of Jonathas de Andrade, “Com o coração saindo pela boca/With the heart coming out of the mouth,” at the 2022 Brazilian Pavilion in Venice. Courtesy of Ding Musa/Fundação Bienal de São Paulo.
The colorful pavilion adopts the visual vernacular of science fairs, which De Andrade used to visit as a child, conveying a sense of eye-popping dioramas and displays. On one side of a room, a suspended head bobs up and down, and in the center, a giant lip sculpture on the ceiling slowly spews out a red inflatable heart that continues to expand to fill the room, pushing visitors against the walls.
The phrase the work expresses inspired the title of the exhibition, and is a key to understanding De Andrade’s poetic voice. “It’s an expression which I love because it’s very ambiguous,” he said. “It speaks both to being in the midst of a tragedy but also being in deep emotion—so we have to decide if we are going to enjoy the emotion or if we’re dealing with a disaster. Sometimes it’s both. This heart that comes out of the mouth softly becomes a birth. It’s a tongue, it’s organs, it’s vomit, it becomes lungs, it goes and pushes people to squeeze into the space and figure out how to negotiate the space together again.”
Installation view of Jonathas de Andrade, “Com o coração saindo pela boca/With the heart coming out of the mouth,” at the 2022 Brazilian Pavilion in Venice. Courtesy of Ding Musa/Fundação Bienal de São Paulo.
De Andrade uses his practice as a catalyst for social change, responding particularly to the inequities of race, class, and labor in Brazil. As he sees it, the poetic absurdity of some of these expressions—when taken literally or translated—opens up the space to forge new meanings. “Brazil’s atmosphere feels stuck at the moment,” he said. “I think this is how we can recognize the force, the power of the collective body to create a new political libido and change the mood.”
It’s a knotty display that needles many of the issues facing contemporary Brazil without being too explicit—no need to spell out the meaning of the bitten-off tongue that sits on the floor of one room, or the rolled-up banknote on the wall of another. De Andrade’s hope is that art can become a space in which to untangle some of these issues and find a path to break free from oppression. 
As he navigated the tone for an exhibition that is openly critical of the country he is representing, the artist said it was a challenge “trying to find and read what is possible in the Brazilian context, which is quite harsh”—hence his somewhat indirect approach. But for the possibilities this kind of confrontation opens up, he said, “It’s worth taking a risk.”
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What do you get when you combine the Baroque interior of a Venetian palazzo with the bottomless void of the blackest material in the world?
Ask Anish Kapoor, the British-Indian artist who is unveiling the first sculptures he has made using Vantablack, casting an illustrious shadow across this year’s Venice Biennale.
The material in question, which Kapoor has called more of a technology than a paint, was initially developed by the U.K.-based Surrey NanoSystems for military-grade stealth weaponry. The coating, which refracts light and transforms it into heat, consists of millions of carbon nanotubes, which are “grown” in a chamber under powerful lamps.
Now, Vantablack’s first aesthetic applications are on display in an exhibition that unfurls across two venues—the Gallerie dell’Accademia, one of Venice’s most iconic venues for experiencing the art of Old Masters—and a palazzo acquired by Kapoor himself.
Installation view of Anish Kapoor’s exhibition at the Palazzo Manfrin, Venice. Photo: © David Levene.
Swallowing 99.8 percent of visible light, Vantablack is akin to a void of darkness or a black hole, and Kapoor has produced several circular-shaped objects clad in the coating. The works are finally coming to proverbial light after a long and public feud with artist Stuart Semple, who openly criticized Kapoor’s studio being given exclusive license to use it.
“There’s been this ridiculous controversy about me having control over the color,” Kapoor told Wallpaper. He added, “It’s perfectly straightforward: it’s not a color. It’s a technology. And it’s extremely complicated and sophisticated.”
Installation view of Anish Kapoor’s exhibition at the Palazzo Manfrin, Venice. Photo: © David Levene.
The debut of the artist’s Vantablack works also marks the first phase of the establishment of the Anish Kapoor Foundation in the Palazzo Manfrin Venier. Previously a popular gallery among 19th-century literati—including Lord Bryon and Édouard Manet—with many of its original paintings now housed in the the Accademia’s collection, the 18th-century mansion in Cannaregio had in recent decades fallen into disrepair. Upon completion of a full renovation, the palazzo will become the artist’s headquarters and consist of an exhibition venue, studio, and archive for his previous works. “I feel a deep commitment to Venice, its architecture and its support for the contemporary arts,” the artist said in a statement.
Installation view Gallerie dell’Accademia © Anish Kapoor. Photo: © Attilio Maranzano.
The dual-venue exhibition, on view through October 9 and curated by Rijksmuseum director Taco Dibbits, also features a selection of Kapoor’s other iconic works beyond Vantablack. Dibbits said in a statement: “All artists, however cutting edge and contemporary, are in debate with those who have gone before. The Gallerie dell’Accademia is the perfect site for a modern master to explore the themes that have always engaged sculptors and painters. Kapoor’s latest works, using the most advanced nanotechnology, promise to be a revelation.”
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