Eliana Willis

A whopping 213 artists will participate in the main exhibition of the Venice Biennale, which opens April 23 across the Arsenale and the Giardini.
As is tradition, exactly what we can expect from curator Cecilia Alemani’s show, “The Milk of Dreams”—which takes its title from a book by the Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington—will be kept under wraps until the preview next week. But what we do know is that it will draw on themes of Surrealism, otherworldliness, and transformation beyond human forms.
According to Alemani, a few fundamental questions underpin the exhibition: “How is the definition of the human changing? What constitutes life, and what differentiates plant and animal, human and non-human?” 
In looking forward, the curator will also look backward to mine history and explore overlooked moments, figures, and perspectives for new answers. In seeking to center women and non-gender-conforming artists, the show will look back to patriarchal narratives surrounding occultism and the history of the witch. Looking to the future, the show will also consider posthuman possibilities, such as cyborgs, as modes of survival for the human spirit.
We teased out some of the main themes to expect from this historic biennale, which includes artists from 58 countries and will span more than 100 years of art history.

The Pioneering Women of Tech Art
The landing page for Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Agent Ruby (2010). Courtesy the artist.
Digital art may be all the rage right now, but Alemani has hit the rewind button to remind digital natives to respect their mamas by highlighting the work of female generative and computer art pioneers.
There will be a gallery devoted to Vera Molnár, the 98-year-old Hungarian artist who makes minimalist geometric compositions composed with algorithms written in the (now positively primeval) programming language of Fortran. Molnár began programming with punch cards as early as 1968—before computers had screens—and is still working today from her nursing home in Paris—and is about to drop a series of NFTs.
Then, there is Lillian Schwartz, an early experimenter with computer-mediated art. Born in 1927, the U.S. artist grew up during the Great Depression, and she created groundbreaking work in the 1960s and ’70s as part of the Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) group, working with light boxes and kinetic sculpture. Schwartz went on to make a series of groundbreaking computer-animated films built from visual generative algorithms written by fellow artist-collaborator and software engineer Ken Knowlton. 
Another one to look out for is the legendary new media art pioneer Lynn Hershman Leeson, who made what is regarded by some as the first ever media work in 1966, by incorporating sound into her work.
“Nobody had ever done that, and consequently, I was told for years it wasn’t art and nobody would show it,” the 81-year-old artist told Artnet News. Leeson also began building an artificial intelligence, Agent Ruby, in 1998 as part of her practice of expanded cinema. The A.I. was a stand-in for a cyborg character who had a lonely hearts column on the internet in her film Technolust.
In Venice, Leeson is showing a film called Logic Paralyzes the Heart, about a 61-year-old cyborg played by the Chinese-American actress Joan Chen, who goes on a retreat to find ways to become more human. It will be installed in a room wallpapered with AI-generated faces of people who don’t exist.
“It is all about the two sides of existence of the future: the cyborgian side, and what that can accomplish without actually having human qualities, and humans who lack the capacity that A.I. can function with,” Leeson said. “It’s kind of like The Wizard of Oz, where you have these characters, and one doesn’t have a heart and one doesn’t have a brain, and they both feel inadequate. And it’s a matter that we need both, and one can’t be the master of the other. We need to collaborate with all systems that are alive on the planet in order to have a future.”

Spooks on Spooks
Medium Eusapia Palladino (woman in the background) during mandolin levitatation during a seance at the house of Baron von Schrenck Notzing in Germany march 13, 1903. Photo by Apic/Getty Images.
Superstitious visitors to the biennale might want to carry a smudge of sage with them, as Alemani’s artist list suggests that we should expect no dearth of witchery.
We counted at least six artists who have spent time communing beyond the veil. These figures include the obscure Italian psychic and artist Milly Canavero, who made automatic writings and drawings she believed were messages from extraterrestrials; Hélène Smith, a Swiss Surrealist and psychic medium who claimed to communicate with Martians; and Josefa Tolrà, a self-taught Spanish medium and artist whose sacred and cosmic visions fused traditional beliefs with vivid imagination.
These are by no means the only artists who claimed to be physical and spiritual mediums on the list. There is also Linda Gazzera, a spiritualist medium who captured her spectral materializations in photographs, Italian spiritualist Eusapia Palladino, and Georgiana Houghton, a British spiritualist medium and painter whose abstract works referred to as “spirit drawings” were produced during seances in the 19th century.

Indigenous Perspectives 
Gabriel Chaile Indudablemente estos músicos están rayados (II), (2019) Installation view at ChertLüdde, Berlin. Photo Andrea Rossetti
When it comes to negotiating a new relationship with animals and Earth, especially in the face of a climate emergency, the pains of late capitalism, and emergent technology, Indigenous voices will be among those most pertinent to listen to. In the Giardini this year, for example, Indigenous perspectives will have a landmark place among many pavilions, including at the Nordic pavilion, which has been renamed the Sámi Pavilion for a presentation of three Indigenous artists from the Sápmi region, which stretches across all three of the nation-states of Sweden, Finland, and Norway.
Inside the Arsenale, as a part of Alemani’s exhibition, work by another Sámi artist will be on view—70-year-old Britta Marakatt-Labba, who grew up in a reindeer-herding family in Sápmi/Northern Sweden. The artist’s hand-embroidered textile works tell stories about Sámi history and life in the communities.
Important perspectives from the Global south, including that of Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, an Indigenous Yanomami artist from Sheroana in the Upper Orinoco River of the Venezuelan Amazon, makes delicate drawings pulling from ancestral knowledge and symbols of Yanomami culture. His work appears in the Sydney Biennale, which on view until June 13, and was included in the Berlin Biennale in 2020.
Also from South America is Gabriel Chaile, from Tucumán in Northwest Argentina, who creates sculptures drawing on Pre-Columbian traditions. Jaider Esbell, an artist and curator who is of the Macuxi people in Brazil, made incredibly vivid drawings will also have work present. (The artist was found dead at age 41 last fall in his home in São Paulo.) 
From farther north in Canada, artist Shuvinai Ashoona, who is Inuk, will present intricate pen and pencil drawings that depict Inuit life in the far North of Canada. Cree and Métis rising star artist Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, who was subject of a solo project show at MoMA last year, works with found materials to consider issues around land, property, and economy.
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Participating in the Venice Biennale has never been an easy feat. To take part in the prestigious event, countries need to secure funding, ship art across the world to Venice, mount an exhibition in a rented structure—most of which are hundreds of years old—and, finally, staff their pavilion for the biennale’s six-month duration.
The usual hurdles were exponentially harder to surmount this year due the dire state of world affairs and the effects of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. For artists and curators from countries that have been hit hardest by Covid-19 or those that have struggled most to foot the bill—presentations require around $100,000 to $300,000, according to several commissioners we spoke to—it’s been a race against both time and resources.
“We are the marginalized of the marginalized—even in the Global South—and we want to change that,” artists Hit Man Gurung and Sheelesha Rajbhandari told Artnet News from Kathmandu, Nepal. The curators of the first ever Nepal Pavilion at the Venice Biennale said it has long been a dream to participate in the celebrated international event, but that financial difficulty and a lack of government support had made it impossible until now.
“The global art scene is always dominated by the powerful countries; the same geopolitics that governs the world governs the art scene,” Gurung said.
Nepal Pavilion curators Hit Man Gurung and Sheelesha Rajbhandari with artist Tsherin Sherpa.
In early January 2021, a group of individuals and private arts organizations decided to change that narrative by making the Nepal pavilion a reality—despite the pandemic, and even though they hadn’t yet secured the funding to do so. “We knew we were going to make it happen and put Nepal on the world stage,” Sangeeta Thapa, one of the commissioners, told Artnet News.
Nepal’s featured artist is Tsherin Sherpa, whose work aims to change what he deems “an international understanding of Nepali art plagued by Western conceptualization of the Himalayan region.” The total cost for the pavilion, including shipping, leasing of the space, travel expenses, and mounting of the artwork will be in excess of $200,000, funding for which was still being raised in the penultimate weeks before the event.
Nepal’s Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation has promised to chip in for shipping costs, but a couple of weeks out from the unveiling, Thapa said the exact contribution had yet to be settled. So far, materializing the pavilion has been helped with support from the Siddhartha Arts Foundation, the Nepal Academy of Fine Arts, Rossi and Rossi gallery—which represents Sherpa—and the Rubin Museum of Art from New York, which has funded 50 percent of costs.
Angela Su: working in progress. Courtesy of the artist.
Overcoming Coronavirus Restrictions
In Asia, where tough coronavirus restrictions have severely limited travel, effectively imposing geographic isolation on an otherwise well-connected region, artists and curators have had to work extra hard to make it to Venice.
Hong Kong only lifted its flight bans on nine countries and changed the 14-day supervised quarantine period to seven for returning residents a month ahead of the opening. But this hasn’t deterred the team of the Hong Kong Pavilion from coming to Venice.
“There is a full exhibition team in Venice,” a spokesperson from M+, a new museum for visual culture in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, which is co-presenting the pavilion with Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC), told Artnet News. The pavilion’s featured artist Angela Su was already on site working with her exhibition team and guest curator Freya Chou. “We are glad that Covid restrictions have not affected the quality or the nature of the work going on show,” the spokesperson said.
While daily life and travel in much of Asia is returning to normal, mainland China continues to roll out lockdowns and adhere to strict border controls. The China Pavilion is a state-run affair organized by the ministry of culture and presented by China Arts and Entertainment Group Ltd. (a state-owned cultural enterprise). The pavilion’s group show will feature the work of four artists—Liu Jiayu, Wang Yuyang, Xu Lei, and the art collective AT art group. But two weeks out from the vernissage of the event Yuyang, who is showing in Venice for the first time, was still unsure of his ability to attend. “I hope my work and myself make it to the opening,” he said.
Some countries, like New Zealand, which had selected its artist—Yuki Kihara, a New Zealander of Japanese and Samoa descent—in 2019, well before country’s severe coronavirus restrictions limited its access to the world, have had to take into consideration the unexpected risk of further restrictions and expensive hotel quarantine when returning home.
“We only confirmed two weeks ago to travel to Venice as a delegation,” Jude Chambers, the pavilion’s project director told Artnet News. “Being able to safely support our delegation to be in Venice was looking near impossible at one point.” While New Zealand has reopened its borders for now, as a contingency, the team is prepared and budgeted to secure rooms in quarantine facilities on their return home in case regulations change quickly.
The financial difficulties caused by the pandemic have also made sourcing funding more difficult than ever, and a few weeks out, the New Zealand cohort was still raising money to cover costs in Venice.
“Fundraising has been the biggest challenge,” Chambers said. “Normally, there are events with the artist and curator to raise funds from potential patrons, but we only managed to offer a limited number due to Covid restrictions. It’s been tough.”
Two Faʻafafine (After Gauguin) (2020). Detail from “Paradise Camp” 2020 series by Yuki Kihara. Image courtesy of the artist and Milford Galleries, Aotearoa New Zealand.
Bootstrapping the Way to Venice
Other artists have taken the challenge of funding into their own hands. Iranian-born French national Firouz Farmanfarmaian, who is representing Kyrgyzstan for the Central Asian country’s first-ever national pavilion in Venice—the artist shares tribal heritage with the Turanian nomads of Kyrgyz—had to procure his own funding for the presentation.
The total cost needed is more than $200,000, and funds were still being sought when we spoke, through the artist’s We Are the Nomads platform, a production company that produces all his creative endeavors, including exhibitions. While Kyrgyzstan’s ministry of culture signed off on the project, financial resources were diminished by a lawsuit against the government over the health and safety of the Kumtor Gold Mine, one of the largest gold mines in Central Asia, which is responsible for 12.5 percent of the impoverished country’s GDP.
“Our mission is to assist the government to kickstart their cultural tourism industry by assisting them with fundraising from private companies,” Farmanfarmaian told Artnet News. Funding has come from SJ Global Investments, Flora Family Foundation and individual patrons and collections such as Amir FarmanFarmaian, the artist’s and main business partner.
Ayman Baalbaki, who is representing Lebanon during the Venice Biennale, at work on the pavilion. Image courtesy the artist.
Meanwhile for Lebanon, a small Mediterranean country faced with an ongoing economic and political crisis, lack of fuel and electricity and an ever-growing brain drain, not to mention recovering from a devastating explosion to its capital city in August 2020, participating in the Venice Biennale is not high on the list of government priorities. But a group of private donors, artists and a curator, with blessing from the ministry of culture, were determined to gather resources to make it happen.
“This is an entirely private endeavor; the government hasn’t spent a single penny,” Basel Dalloul, one of the main donors, told Artnet News, adding that due to Lebanon’s collapsed banking system, funders had to send money to bank accounts in Paris. “All of us in the private sector have a duty to make sure that Lebanon and its culture stays on the map in spite of all the problems we face,” Dalloul said.
Tanzanian-born London-based writer and curator Shaheen Merali, who is organizing Uganda’s first official pavilion, challenged the idea that for certain countries its more difficult to show in Venice: “It’s a big deal for all nations to present at Venice nowadays—even France or Britain, because our cultures have become recessively more right-wing and funding for anything has become part of the hierarchy of values,” he said.
Merali’s statement echoed others in speaking about their various winding roads to Venice. Despite the unique logistical barriers posed by the pandemic, the biggest problem most have faced has been a perennial difficulty when it comes to staging large-scale art events: securing funding at a time when culture is being deprioritized amid alternative political prerogatives. But as these artists, curators and patrons demonstrate, determination to showcase a nation’s cultural glories, goes a long way.
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The tragically short yet miraculous career of Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known simply as Raphael, is a wonder even to this day, as a dazzling new exhibition at the National Gallery in London reminds us.
Raphael was one of the most exalted artists of the High Renaissance—an archaeologist, architect, draftsman, poet, and painter of the highest order—and along with Michelangelo and Leonardo practically defined the era.
Loans from institutions the world over come together in this impressive showing, which tracks two decades of his career, from his time in Umbria, through his time marinating in the culture of Florence, and finally to his last years serving the Church in Rome.
See more works from the marvelous show below.
“Raphael” is on view at the National Gallery in London through July 31, 2022. 
Raphael, The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist (‘The Alba Madonna’) (ca. 1509-11). © Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Raphael, The Madonna of the Pinks (‘La Madonna dei Garofani’) (ca. 1506-7). © The National Gallery, London
Raphael, Terranuova Madonna (1504-5). © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Photo: Jörg P. Ander.
Raphael, Saint John the Baptist Preaching (1505). © The National Gallery, London
Raphael, The Madonna and Child with the Infant Baptist (The Garvagh Madonna) (ca. 1509-10). © The National Gallery, London
Raphael, The Crucified Christ with the Virgin Mary, Saints and Angels (The Mond Crucifixion) (ca. 1502-3). © The National Gallery, London
Raphael, The Procession to Calvary (ca. 1504-5). © The National Gallery, London
Raphael, The Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Nicholas of Bari (‘The Ansidei Madonna’), (1505). © The National Gallery, London
Raphael, An Allegory (‘Vision of a Knight’) (ca. 1504). © The National Gallery, London
Raphael, Portrait of Pope Julius II (1511). © The National Gallery, London.
Raphael, Saint Catherine of Alexandria (ca. 1507). © The National Gallery, London
Raphael, Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist (The Esterházy Madonna) (ca. 1508). © Szépmuvészeti Múzeum – Museum of Fine Arts Budapest, 2020.
Raphael, Study for the Head of an Apostle in the Transfiguration. © Private Collection.
Raphael, Study for an angel (ca. 1515-16). © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.
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Since his death at just 27 from a drug overdose in 1988, Jean-Michel Basquiat has become a legendary figure, immortalized in film and commanding more money at auction than any other American artist.
With his potent blend of fame and critical acclaim, Basquiat is both a pop-culture phenomenon and a major target for art museums in search of the next blockbuster exhibition. But his latest solo exhibition in New York isn’t hosted by one of the city’s temples of arts and culture.
Instead, it’s being held at the Starrett-Lehigh, a warehouse and office building in Chelsea, in a ground-floor space that has been transformed into a wood-paneled gallery for the occasion by architect David Adjaye and design firm Pentagram.
The show is “Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure,” and it’s the first exhibition organized by the artist’s family. It features more than 200 drawings and paintings from the artist’s estate, including many major works which have not been seen for decades—if ever.

Installation view of “Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure.” Photo: Ivane Katamashvili, courtesy of the Jean-Michel Basquiat Estate.
Since the death of Gerard Basquiat, the artist’s father, in 2013, the estate has been run by Jean-Michel’s younger sisters, Jeanine Heriveaux and Lisane Basquiat. The two have built a Basquiat branding empire, licensing the artist’s work and image for a wide range of merchandise, from socks to skateboards to seemingly anything in between.
But “King Pleasure,” which the sisters curated with their stepmother, Nora Fitzpatrick, marks a new chapter for the estate, offering unprecedented insight into Basquiat’s home life and the years before he skyrocketed to art-world stardom.
The show presents Basquiat as a singular talent, a creative genius driven to create seemingly from the start—childhood drawings are shown alongside his birth announcement (6 pounds, 10 ounces). There are also family photos, home movies, and a wide variety of personal artifacts.
Lisanne Basquiat, Jean-Michel Basqiat, and Jeanine Heriveaux as children. Courtesy of the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Set to a soundtrack of period music such as Blondie’s “Call Me” and “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” by Diana Ross—the estate has partnered with Spotify on a suite of playlists titled “Listen Like Basquiat“—the show offers a surprisingly intimate portrait.
It’s the family’s attempt to push back against the dominant narrative of Basquiat’s life, which tends to romanticize his time as a 17-year-old homeless street artist, his issues with addiction, and his string of beautiful girlfriends, which included a young Madonna.
“This is a way for us to collaborate as a community and fill in the spaces from all of our perspectives on Jean-Michel and his impact on the world,” Lisane Basquiat said in a statement. “We wanted to bring his work and personality forward, in a way only we can, for people to immerse themselves in. We want this to be an experiential and multi-dimensional celebration of Jean-Michel’s life.”
In some ways, “King Pleasure” follows the playbook set by the recent trend for pop-up museums and immersive exhibitions—take, for instance, its relatively high ticket prices: $35 general admission, or pay $65 to skip the line. But the unlike the craze for animated digital projections of famous artworks, this show has the genuine article: masterpieces that haven’t been seen in decades, safeguarded by the family but locked away from the public.
Installation view of “Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure.” Photo: Ivane Katamashvili, courtesy of the Jean-Michel Basquiat Estate.
Among the most impressive are the massive canvases Basquiat painted in 1985 for the VIP room at the downtown nightclub Palladium, torn down in 1997 to make way for a New York University dorm. The monumental paintings mark the exhibition’s finale, installed in a lounge-like space that seems tailor-made for hosting after-hours parties and events with even steeper entry fees.
There are other interesting touches in terms of installation, such as re-creations of rooms from the family’s Boerum Hill home, and a fake façade—complete with bicycle parked outside—of the apartment and studio Basquiat rented from Andy Warhol at 57 Great Jones Street, which serves as a backdrop for animated projections of Basquiat’s handwritten notes. (Don’t expect much in the way of Instagram-ready photo ops, though: the lighting design discourages selfies in front of the art.)
Installation view of “Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure.” Photo: Ivane Katamashvili, courtesy of the Jean-Michel Basquiat Estate.
Nevertheless, it’s transportive to step into the show’s recreation of the Great Jones Street studio, with paintings leaning against the walls and laid out on the floor amid piles of books and art supplies. There’s even the artist’s trench coat, hung up as if waiting for him to grab it on the way out the door.
See more photos from the show below.
Jean-Michel Basqiat, Untitled (100 Yen) (1982). Courtesy of the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, licensed by Artestar, New York.
Installation view of “Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure.” Photo: Ivane Katamashvili, courtesy of the Jean-Michel Basquiat Estate.
Installation view of “Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure.” Photo: Ivane Katamashvili, courtesy of the Jean-Michel Basquiat Estate.
Jean-Michel Basqiat, Jailbirds (1983). Courtesy of the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, licensed by Artestar, New York.
Installation view of “Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure.” Photo: Ivane Katamashvili, courtesy of the Jean-Michel Basquiat Estate.
Jean-Michel Basqiat, Charles the First (1982). Courtesy of the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, licensed by Artestar, New York.
Installation view of “Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure.” Photo: Ivane Katamashvili, courtesy of the Jean-Michel Basquiat Estate.
Installation view of “Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure.” Photo: Ivane Katamashvili, courtesy of the Jean-Michel Basquiat Estate.
Installation view of “Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure.” Photo: Ivane Katamashvili, courtesy of the Jean-Michel Basquiat Estate.
Installation view of “Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure.” Photo: Ivane Katamashvili, courtesy of the Jean-Michel Basquiat Estate.
Jean-Michel Basquiat. Courtesy of the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat.
“Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure” is on view at the Starrett-Lehigh Building, 601 West 26th Street, New York, from April 9, 2022.
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The first-ever Namibian Pavilion at the upcoming 59th Venice Biennale has been thrown into chaos over allegations that it misrepresents the country’s art scene. The uproar has prompted the pavilion’s art patron, Monica Cembrola, to resign just one week before the opening of the event. Meanwhile, the main sponsor of the show, luxury travel company Abercrombie and Kent, has also yanked its support. 
The sudden upheaval follows a petition published online in early March, signed by 372 individuals from the Namibian art community. It expressed outrage regarding the proposed Venice show, calling it a “poorly conceptualized and inappropriate debut that takes an antiquated and problematic view of Namibia and Namibian art.”
The pavilion, to be staged on the island of Certosa, is titled “The Lone Stone Men of the Desert” and features work by a Namibian artist who prefers to be known by the Banksy-like pseudonym RENN. Organizers have called it a “land art project,” which comprises a series of sculptures made of iron rods and desert stones in the likeness of the human form.
RENN is a 64-year-old white Namibian man born in Johannesburg, South Africa, who is making his artistic debut in Venice. He began his practice in 2013 in the desert of Namibia’s Kunene district.
RENN, Out of the Sand for the Namibian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale 2022. Photo ©RENN.
The Venice show also marks the first time that its Italian curator, Marco Furio Ferrario, is organizing an art exhibition. He generally refers to himself as a “strategic consultant,” and has worked since 2014 for companies in Namibia, notably on safari lodges.
“I saw RENN’s artworks in the Namibian desert and fell in love with them,” Ferrario told Artnet News by phone on April 12, adding that he had begun to think about how to show them internationally during the pandemic, and knew the biennial would put RENN’s work on the biggest global stage. Ferrario pitched the idea to the Namibian ministry of culture—which in 2014 had rejected a Namibian artist’s bid to mount a pavilion on the grounds that its scene was “not ready”—and the government agreed to lend its support.
Monica Cembrola, who runs a foundation dedicated to art from Africa, and who came on board as a patron of the pavilion in mid-July 2021, negotiated to stage the event on the island of Certosa. “After I came on board, the curator [Ferrario] did not want to share with me the identity of the artist,” she told Artnet News, as she explained her reasons for leaving the project. “I also wasn’t told that he [RENN] wasn’t an artist. The Namibian art scene deserves better. The petition showed me that the artist was not representing Namibia and I want to help emerging artists from Africa. I have decided to pull out for these reasons.”
Cembrola brought Abercrombie and Kent on board as the pavilion’s lead sponsor. In an official letter obtained by Artnet News, dated April 8, Abercrombie and Kent wrote to Ferrario stating it had given €97,600 to fund Namibia’s debut in Venice but due to the petition and Cembrola’s resignation, it was terminating the sponsorship deal as it would cause “harm” to the A&K brand. The company declined to give a comment to Artnet News.
RENN, Solo for the Namibian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale 2022. Photo ©RENN.
The petition criticizing Ferrario’s initiative alleges that RENN is known publicly as a member of the tourism industry and is “largely disconnected from the contemporary art and cultural scene in Namibia.” It also argues that “The Lone Stone Men of the Desert” project invokes racist and colonialist ideas about Indigenous peoples.
“We feel Namibia is not being represented at the pavilion,” a member of a concerned artist group who signed the petition told Artnet News on condition of anonymity. They added that Ferrario’s team had threatened several people who signed the petition with lawsuits. “The artist is completely unknown to the Namibian art scene and is not representative of Namibia or its artists. No one who organized the pavilion was from Namibia.”
The pavilion has also been criticized privately for selling RENN’s work as part of its “fundraising goals and packages.” Limited-edition prints are being sold for €15,000 ($16,200), and unique sculptures are going for €50,000 ($54,100). 
In a March 11 email exchange obtained by Artnet News, a representative for Namibia’s ministry of culture wrote to the organizers of the Venice Biennale stating that they would pull their support from the pavilion, and asked organizers to officially “remove Namibia” from the exhibition and “allow the originators of the idea to continue with their own exhibition, however not as a Namibian Pavilion.” A few days later, on March 16, according to the same correspondence, the Ministry reversed this decision.
RENN, Far Gone for the Namibian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale 2022. Photo ©RENN.
After members of the Namibian art community first voiced objections to the pavilion in late January (two months before the public petition), Cembrola reached out to key individuals from the art scene in the capital, Windhoek, to bring on board additional artists for the pavilion, notably “emerging and mid-career Namibian artists,” in an effort to project a more accurate vision of the country’s art scene. However, after additional names were submitted, Ferrario told Cembrola it was too late to add more artists. 
“The point of this exhibition is that art comes before the artist,” Ferrario told Artnet News, defending the decision. “I did not choose an artist; I chose artworks.”
The scandal surrounding the Namibian Pavilion is particularly symbolic as it comes at a time when art from Africa is increasingly the focus of the international art world. However, the opportunities this opens up are also full of pitfalls—particularly given the imbalances in power and resources between those abroad and those rooted in countries such as Namibia. 
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