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      When Taiwan Abruptly Canceled Plans for Its Venice Biennale Presentation, Its Organizers Turned to History for a Solution

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      The toast to the opening of the Taiwan exhibition at the 2022 Venice Biennale almost never took place. The show was very close to being canceled after its organizers were forced to ditch their original plans just two weeks before the deadline for submitting their proposal. Yet there they were with dozens of supporters, raising glasses at Palazzo delle Prigioni in San Marco.
      “Because of Taiwan’s situation, the Venice Biennale is a very important platform for us. If we don’t come, we would lose the chance of having a dialogue with international communities,” Jun-Jieh Wang, the director of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, which organized the show, told Artnet News. “We cannot give up.”
      The exhibition is a last-minute archival show titled “Impossible Dreams” that traces the history of Taiwan’s appearances in Venice since 1995, first as a national pavilion before being demoted to a collateral event, and from group shows to solo presentations.
      Installation view of ‘Impossible Dreams,’ Taiwan’s Collateral Event at Venice Biennale. Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum.
      The problems began last December when a series of sexual assault allegations against Sakuliu Pavavaljung, the artist who was originally selected to represent the self-governed island in the exhibition, emerged online. The 61-year-old award-winning Indigenous artist would’ve fit the theme of this year’s Venice Biennale. But the scandal escalated quickly, with over 1,000 art workers condemning the artist and asking for his show to be canceled. The Taipei Fine Arts Museum had to decide quickly; district prosecutors had already begun an investigation.
      “It was a very tough situation. But this is a very sensitive topic, and it has gone beyond a moral question as it involves a criminal investigation,” Wang said. “We decided to end the partnership in mid-December. We can’t possibly find another artist within such a short period of time after spending nearly two years working with [Pavavaljung].”
      Even if there was enough time, the chances of having another artist agree were highly unlikely, as no one wanted to be the filler artist after the explosion of such a serious scandal, Wang said.
      The team quickly came up with the archival exhibition.
      “The archive is readily available. It’s easy to put together and set up, in terms of transport and logistics,” Patrick Flores, who was originally hired as the curator for Pavavaljung’s show, said.
      Curator Okwui Enwezor at the Taiwan exhibition at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999. Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum.
      The Politics of Venice Biennale
      As the war in Ukraine haunts this year’s Venice Biennale, Taiwan faces its own imminent military threats from China, a close ally of Russia’s that has been deploying fighter jets into Taiwanese airspace. The existence of Taiwan, self-governed since the Kuomintang political party fled the mainland after losing its war against the Chinese Communist Party, has long been a point of political contention. China, which claims Taiwan as a province, has escalated it saber-rattling recent months, leading some to see parallels with Russia and Ukraine.
      “Of course, there is an ongoing war that involves one country invading another, and then naturally, people from outside of Taiwan would ask: what about the relationship between China and Taiwan? Is it very similar?” Wang said.
      The answers to such questions are complicated, even within Taiwan, the museum director said.
      While on the one hand, there are concerns about whether China will invade Taiwan, there are also pro-Beijing voices within the island that favor maintaining close ties with China.
      “We hope to foster a dialogue with the international communities through art,” he said. “There shouldn’t be just one voice, one perspective.”
      Letter from La Biennale di Venezia inviting Taiwan to participate in the 46th Venice Biennale in 1995. Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum.
      One of the highlights of “Impossible Dreams” is a 1995 letter from Gian Luigi Rondi of the Venice Biennale to curator Tsai Ching-fen inviting Taiwan to take part in the biennale for its centenary. The event was a milestone, marking Taiwan’s entrance onto the world stage less than a decade after it lifted its three-decade martial law order in 1987.
      The following years saw Taiwan presenting group exhibitions as its national pavilion. Things changed in 2003 when Taiwan was stripped of its pavilion status after successful protests from China (which secured its own national pavilion slot but had to cancel after the Sars epidemic). Taiwan then got bumped to a collateral event, but organizers never gave up, even taking on a long-term lease at a former prison in San Marco.
      Thus, even as a collateral event, Taiwan has a role to play. “Collateral is a symptom of a lack, addressing a gap that needs to be filled,” Flores said.
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      Venice Biennale Artists Want to Blow Up the System—But Around Town, Power-Brokers Found Other Ways to Peddle Influence

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      The crema of the art-industry crop descended on the Most Serene Republic of Venice last week after three tumultuous years away. Suffice to say, the world has transformed dramatically since Cecilia Alemani was named curator of this most prestigious art show, and the vibe shift left many wondering how the Biennale would meet our collective moment.
      But isn’t this the eternal Biennale quandary? How much should the real world penetrate the ivy-covered walls of the Giardini? And why, for that matter, are we still dealing with nation-state pavilions at all? What about countries with dismal human-rights records—should they be here toasting with us? Should we acknowledge the migrant crisis playing out in the same waters that pass through these opulent little canals?
      These are urgent questions that are not easily answered. Yet this year, the national pavilions seemed to be somewhat united in a desire to tear themselves down—or, at least, to create some new conceptual ground zero to work from. In the Giardini, the cunning German artist Maria Eichhorn literally chipped away at her country’s Nazi-built architecture to reveal the smaller bones of a pavilion that had been covered up and revamped by Hitler’s government. She had previously attempted to slice the building into pieces and relocate it somewhere else—to the surprise of no one, this was not permitted by Biennale brass.
      Maria Eichhorn, “Relocating a Structure,” the German pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale 2022. © Maria Eichhorn / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022, photo: Jens Ziehe.
      If dismantling the very foundation of the Biennale was on one artist’s agenda, Spaniard Ignasi Aballí looked to improve it. His subtle pavilion, called “Corrección” (“Correction”), saw the entire building’s walls shift by an angle of exactly 10 degrees in a sly critique of its squished, off-kilter placement in relation to its neighbors, Belgium and the Netherlands. Though it did not seem entirely political—and some visitors complained it felt like a parody of contemporary art—it was a disorienting and punk gesture (and serves as institutional critique). At the Swiss pavilion’s installation by Latifa Echakhch, it looked like there had been a house fire before anyone got there, and VIPs and press crunched around on wood chips and ash. Meanwhile, Tomo Savic-Gecan’s Croatia pavilion rejected the confines of a physical space entirely, staging so-subtle-as-to-be-almost-invisible performances in other countries’ pavilions three to five times a day instead. 
      One can sense artists’ frustration with being contained—by worn definitions, old structures, and dusty categories. In Alemani’s central exhibition “The Milk of Dreams,” there was a similar desire to break free—and the New York-based curator buttoned each section with historical proof that artists have been pushing this agenda for decades, despite many of them being excluded from the canon or choosing to operate outside the mainstream.
      In contrast to Alemani’s expansive vision, the national pavilions, by way of their very structure, inevitably have to reflect a more old-fashioned, inflexible view of the world. To critique this, Estonia took over the Dutch pavilion with a gentler kind of destruction, planting greenery in a Jumanji-esque re-wilding. Ukraine, one of the many nations that don’t fit into the Giardini’s world map, was urgently given a special show in a pop-up piazza by the main food and drink station. It was still being installed as Met director Max Hollein, Castello’s Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, and globe-trotting curator Hans Ulrich Obrist darted around on Tuesday.
      The Romania Pavilion. Adina Pintilie, You Are Another Me—A Cathedral of the Body (2022). Courtesy the artist. Exhibition photographer: Clelia Cadamuro.
      Just out of sight from the Piazza Ucraina stands the Russian pavilion, shuttered after its team withdrew in light of the recent attack on Ukraine. (“There is no place for art when civilians are dying under the fire of missiles, when citizens of Ukraine are hiding in shelters when Russian protesters are getting silenced,” the organizers said at the time.) It inevitably became the backdrop for artistic interventions, and these were, unsettlingly and ironically, swiftly silenced. At least a few artists staged anti-Putin performances at the site before Italian riot police dispatched a constant presence there.
      There were a smattering of celebrities in attendance, from Vincent Cassel and Julianne Moore to Catherine Deneuve in a vibe that was more Cannes than Coachella (all those people are understandably at that event, which overlaps). At least a few fewer parties were held, with Pinault’s major palazzo bash and Victor Pinchuk’s Future Generation Art Prize soirée swapped, respectively, for a lush dinner and somber press conference with a video message from Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Yet one could hardly call this Biennale austere—fashion labels like Gucci and Chanel swooped in to hold their own splashy events instead. There was a bit of joy, too, with a rumored wedding of two Ukrainian artists exhibiting in Venice officiated by none other than Nan Goldin, who was showing in the main exhibition.
      In another bejeweled evening celebration, auctioneer Simon de Pury presided over an auction and dinner to benefit Ukraine relief, which raised over one million. The early 20th century folk artist Maria Prymachenko, whose work came under threat in the ongoing war, achieved a new record with a €110,000 ($118,000) sale. A work donated by Ukrainian artist Alina Zamanova, Day 31 of War (2022), fetched €35,000 ($37,500).
      Mikolaj Sekutowicz speaks during the Charity Gala for Ukraine at Scuola Grande Di San Rocco on April 21, 2022 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Daniele Venturelli/Getty Images)
      Where the topic of land war was not being dealt with, the body was a battleground. Austria and Brazil were among the countries that opted in for Instagram-ready installations featuring goofily large body parts, while melanie bonajo’s Dutch pavilion celebrated the naked form and asked viewers to snuggle up on cushions. (I guess one could say we needed that closeness after so much remoteness and alienation—though the urgency probably depends on whether or not you had to get a COVID test for your return trip.)
      The body as a theme appeared with more rigor at the Romanian pavilion, where film director Adina Pintilie offered an unabashed look at intimacy, grappling with how we connect to each other and our own bodies via a multi-channel installation called “You Are Another Me – A Cathedral of the Body.”
      Over spaghetti al nero in the unseasonably chilly evenings, discussions of the national pavilions were frequently eclipsed by excitement over megadealer-produced palazzo shows. “It is the world’s longest art fair,” quipped one art critic as we sipped wine during Paula Rego’s presentation at Victoria Miro’s Venetian outpost, perfectly timed to the artist’s inclusion in the main exhibition.
      Installation view Gallerie dell’Accademia © Anish Kapoor. Photo: © Attilio Maranzano.
      Despite the Biennale’s decision to remove gallery names from the main exhibition wall labels in a bid to push back on the market, every heavyweight was present with its biggest star elsewhere (and those galleries that contributed cash to Alemani’s show had their names listed online as a consolation prize).
      Some of these shows were indeed worth the hype: Marlene Dumas’s poignant exhibition at François Pinault’s Palazzo Grassi squeezed the spirit in a way those national pavilions did not. In the bustling tourist checkpoint of Piazza San Marco, an encyclopedic Louise Nevelson survey provided an authoritative look at her storied art practice, which—fitting to the mood of the year—involved breaking things apart and putting them back together again. The show marked 60 years since the late artist represented the U.S. at the Venice Biennale.
      Inside, Pace founder Arne Glimcher leaned against a window chatting with a friend; outside, a group of Venetian teenagers wearing T-shirts with the letters of Nevelson’s name staged a delightfully odd promotional campaign in the rain. (I watched as they tried, giggling, to get into formation—they seemed happy about the paid gig despite being wet.)
      Venetian teenagers promoting the Louise Nevelson show. Photo: Artnet News
      While the official Venice Biennale was majority female, the collateral events were a far more conservative lineup of blue-chip male favorites. Seemingly every big gallery was rushing to make up for lost time with collectors over the past two-plus years.
      Gagosian may have had nary an artist in Alemani’s main show, but no matter: Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, and Katharina Grosse all had solo projects around town. Outside the Giardini and Arsenale, everything felt very much business as usual, with Anish Kapoor’s neoliberal patented color show and an Ugo Rondinone exhibition organized by a consortium of galleries. There was also a major presentation Hermann Nitsch—whose death last week did not halt his dinner party—and shows of Joseph Beuys and Bruce Nauman, among other long-ago-anointed boldface names.
      So, while the Biennale itself succeeded in offering an erudite alternative to the male-dominated art world, the exhibitions everywhere else tipped the scale right back to the status quo. Can the Biennale really change without being put through the chopper? I certainly hope so, because I want to come back—and I don’t want anything to be burned down. But I recognize that, in any case, it is incumbent upon the best artists to try.
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      The Art Collective Behind the Improvised Kazakhstan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale Has a Simple Message: ‘Everyone Is an Artist’

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      Orta, the art collective representing Kazakhstan at the country’s first Venice Biennale pavilion, spent four years making the large sculptural installation that was to be the centerpiece of the exhibition. Then, when shipping delays struck, they had just 10 days to cobble together a temporary display to have something to present on the art world’s biggest stage.
      “We were crushed,” Rustem Begenov, who cofounded Orta with his wife, Alexandra Morozova, in 2015, told Artnet News.
      But rather than give up, Orta came up with an alternative plan to utterly transform the exhibition venue, a coworking space called Spazio Arco, by covering every surface with what they were able to scrounge up locally: wooden dowels, brown paper, and aluminum foil.
      “We said, ‘what would Kalmykov do?’” Begenov added.
      Entrance to Orta’s LAI-PI-CHU-PLEE-LAPA Centre for the New Genius at the Kazakhstan pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
      Kalmykov is Sergey Kalmykov, the Russian artist who inspired the pavilion and the collective. Considered today one of the nation’s most important art-historical figures, he made 1,500 artworks and thousands of pages of manuscripts that were posthumously discovered after he died in penury.
      Begenov and Morozova came to know Kalmykov’s work in 2016, when they stumbled upon some of his prolific writings in state archives.
      Orta, LAI-PI-CHU-PLEE-LAPA Center for the New Genius at the Kazakhstan pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Photo by Nathan Monroe-Yavneh.
      Those writings are the basis for LAI-PI-CHU-PLEE-LAPA Center for the New Genius, the title of the pavilion and a longterm project for Orta, which hopes to open centers around the world to help viewers tap into their latent genius, as Kalmykov would have wanted.
      “We were just so inspired by Kalmykov’s attitude toward art,” Orta’s Sabina Kuangaliyeva told Artnet News. “They call him the Kazakhstani Van Gogh.”
      Orta, LAI-PI-CHU-PLEE-LAPA Center for the New Genius at the Kazakhstan pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
      “What captivated us, what touched us, is Kalmykov didn’t care what anyone else thought. He said, ‘I am a genius,’” Begenov added. “He died as a bum. Now, 55 years later, he is at the Venice Biennale.”
      Instead of presenting its planned presentation, the collective is staging daily performances at noon and 5 p.m. that it calls “spectacular experiments.”
      The plan next is to reopen in May with the full Center for the New Genius experience, a massive cardboard and LED sculpture designed, the group said, to open a portal to the fourth dimension, where greatness lies.
      But even after you leave Venice, Orta wants you to live by the center’s principles every day.
      “Everyone is a genius. Everyone is an artist,” Kuangaliyeva said. “Don’t wait for the world to recognize you—just be one.”
      The the Kazakhstan Pavilion is on view at Spazio Arco, Dorsoduro 1485, 30123 Venice, Italy, April 19–27, 2022 and May 15–November 27, 2022. 
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      In Pictures: See Inside Sonia Boyce’s Golden Lion-Winning U.K. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

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      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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      Here Are the 9 Best Pavilions at the 2022 Venice Biennale

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      After three years, the Venice Biennale has returned to Italy. In what has been described as the art-world Olympics, nations from around the globe organize presentations in a bid to gain international exposure for their artists. (The stakes can be high: The Polish pavilion, for example, receives more visitors during the first week of the Biennale than any of its museums draw all year.)
      To help narrow down which pavilions deserve your closest attention, we’ve put together a guide to our nine favorites below.

      Italy
      Gian Maria Tosatti, “History of the Night and the Fate of Comets” curated by Eugenio Viola
      Gian Maria Tosatti’s “History of the Night and the Fate of Comets” curated by Eugenio Viola at the Italian pavilion in the Arsenale. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
      The Italian pavilion in the Arsenale has been drawing long lines to see its massive installation, which takes over a 6,500-square-foot space called the Tese delle Vergini.
      As the first artist ever to singlehandedly represent the country at the event, Gian Maria Tosatti has created a haunting site-specific installation that draws on Italian history and the decline of industry in the 20th century.
      Visitors are asked to line up one at a time to enter the exhibition, which is filled with old machines sourced from defunct factories. You’ll encounter strange control panels, a room full of mysterious ductwork hanging from the ceiling, and a large bank of sewing machines, seemingly ready for workers to return at any moment.
      Throughout, you’re asked to maintain silence, which allows the ominous quiet of the space to take full effect—especially when it’s interrupted, as by a thunderous creaking door.
      The installation is imbued with a sense of dystopia, culminating with a darkened room where you can step out onto a platform above the water. Contrasting with the emptiness of the rest of the space, there are lights twinkling in the distance, suggesting that someone is out there, beyond this failed experiment.
      —Sarah Cascone

      Latvia
      Skuja Braden, “Selling Water bythe River,” curated by Solvita Krese and Andra Silapētere
      Latvian pavilion, Skuja Braden, “Selling Water by the River,” curated by Solvita Krese and Andra Silapētere, installation view at the Arsenale. Photo courtesy of the Latvia Pavilion.
      Ceramics are not typically the flashiest of mediums, but artist duo Skuja Braden has created a show-stopping installation at the Latvian pavilion at the Arsenale. The more than 300 porcelain works make up for their modest scale in sheer volume, with a profusion of lovingly painted vessels piled up on tables, hanging from the walls, and even scattered across the floor.
      The partners Inguna Skuja and Melissa D. Breiden have been a couple for 22 years, but cannot legally marry in Latvia, where homophobia is widespread. They’ve spoken about facing physical violence, including people throwing bags of excrement at them, making their selection a particularly progressive choice for the nation.
      Their advocacy for the LGBTQ community is visible in works with erotic scenes of female lovers and a wall of bottles shaped like large, perky breasts. But there are also skulls, snails, fruits, lily pads, and many other objects represented in works that range from purely decorative to functional plates, adding a welcome element of design to the exhibition.
      This is one pavilion that rewards close looking, with a plethora of tiny little details waiting to be discovered.
      —Sarah Cascone

      Korea
      Yunchul Kim, “Gyre,” curated by Jungyeon Park, Kahee Jeong and Catherine (Hyun Seo) Chiang More

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      In Pictures: Take a Tour of the Venice Biennale’s Giardini Section, Which Is Full of Inventive Abstraction and the Art of Magic

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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

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      Vesuvius Was Hot, But This New Exhibition of Erotic Art Excavated From Pompeii is Hotter. See Images Here

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      It turns out the eruption of Mount Vesuvius was not necessarily the hottest thing to happen in Pompeii.
      A new exhibition in Italy brings together the many examples of erotic art that once hung in the razed Roman city. Some 70 objects, including sexy frescos, marble sculptures, and bronze medallions, are on display in the show, which opens today at the Pompeii Archaeological Park. 
      Many works have been excavated from the site in recent years, such as a wall painting discovered in 2018 that depicts Priapus, the god of fertility, weighing his penis on a scale. Another, unearthed in 2019, shows the Greek princess Leda being impregnated by a Roman god disguised as a swan.
      Greek myths like that of Leda and the swan were commonly depicted in ancient Roman life, as were more quotidian scenes of intercourse, explained Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of Pompeii archaeological park, in an interview with the Sunday Times. 
      “Eroticism was everywhere,” the director said, “in houses, baths, and public spaces thanks to the influence of the Greeks, whose art heavily featured nudity.”

      [embedded content]

      With new discoveries like those in the show, experts are reconsidering their assumptions about the significance of erotic imagery to ancient Roman culture. “Scholars have tended to interpret any rooms decorated with these scenes as some kind of brothel,” Zuchtriegel told The Guardian. The images, he went on, were once thought to be like menus of the services offered at the site. 
      But applying a modern-day morality to these scenes of the past is not always prudent.
      “It looks a bit like this as you have scenes above each single door, but it is always very risky to make this kind of simplification,” Zuchtriegel said. “The ancient daily life was just as complex as our own, and it’s risky to reconstruct what happened in these places just by judging from the images.”

      Illustrating the commonality of sexual imagery, curators have recreated Roman homes within the exhibition’s galleries. Visitors, including young ones (children are encouraged to attend), are also invited to explore the show through an interactive app, which helps contextualize the images and the figures that appear in them. 
      See more examples of work on view in the exhibition below:
      A sculpture representing Priapus, the Greek god of fertility. Photo: Marco Cantile/LightRocket via Getty Images.
      An installation view of “Art and Sensuality in the Houses of Pompeii.” Photo: Marco Cantile/LightRocket via Getty Images. More

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      Two Venice Biennale Pavilions Focus on Roma Experiences, Including the First One Ever Dedicated to a Romani Artist

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      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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