Shows & Exhibitions

NFTutto bene! It was only a matter of time before NFTs, which upended the art world in 2021, would take over some of Italy’s most prestigious arts venues. 
In April, when the art world’s literati descended on Venice for the 59th edition of the city’s Art Biennale, an NFT exhibition called “Decentral Art Pavilion” popped up in a Venetian palazzo.
Displaying works by more than two dozen artists, including Beeple, Robness, Ryan Koopmans, Alex Wexell, XCOPY and others, the event marked a coming-out moment for NFTs in the often cloistered world of contemporary art. 
Daniel Arsham, Eroding and Reforming Bust of Rome (One Year) (2021),NFT single-channel video with sound. Owned by Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile. Courtesy of the artist.
Now, another exhibition in Florence’s Palazzo Strozzi, “Let’s Get Digital!”, set to open May 18, aims to take visitors on a journey through the vast expanses of digital art, presenting works by Refik Anadol, Anyma, Daniel Arsham, Beeple, Krista Kim and Andrés Reisinger.
Curated by Arturo Galansino, the Strozzi’s director, alongside Serena Tabacchi, director of the Museum of Contemporary Digital Art (MoCDA), the show has been developed with the Fondazione Hillary Merkus Recordati in Florence.
According to Galansino, the exhibition is intended “to bring together the avant-garde and tradition, research and popularization,” by looking at the ways in which art and technology are creating new possibilities for experimentation, research and collaboration. 
Beeple, Infected #34/123 (2020), edition of 123, NFT single-channel video with sound. Owned by Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile. Courtesy of the artist.
“‘Let’s Get Digital!’ sets out to offer a broad insight into the most recent development in digital art now universally recognized by the contemporary system,” Tabacchi added. “Decentralization, blockchains and NFTs have certified and disseminated the work of countless artists, who could not be considered in that capacity until no more than a few years ago.” 
Among the highlights of the show is a site-specific installation for the Palazzo’s courtyard developed by Anadol, in which a series of artificial intelligence algorithms are projected onto visitors as they enter the museum’s lush grounds. And the digital artist Beeple, whose career was launched into the stratosphere after selling his EVERYDAYS: The First 5,000 Days for $69.3 million last year, will be presenting a selection of some of his most well-known, post-apocalyptic digital images. 

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Following in the footsteps of successful city-wide art events in London and Berlin, the debut New York Art Week opens for the first time this week, and it’s going to an absolute extravaganza.
Twenty organizations are part of the initiative, including Christie’s, Creative Time, the Independent Art Fair, and the Met, and each will plan its own programming. Alongside their events and exhibitions, galleries around New York, from Chelsea to the Bowery, will stage shows too. Here are a few highlights to put on your agenda.

“Nari Ward: I’ll Take You There; a Proclamation”Lehmann MaupinThrough June 4
Nari Ward, A Proclamation (2022). Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London.
Nari Ward’s sixth solo show with the gallery explores many of the artist’s perennial interests (public commemoration, the meanings that found materials carry) through four text pieces created from shoelaces, new works on copper panels, and a large-scale installation made from bottles, candles, milk crates, and suitcases, among other materials. The latter work is partly an homage to the painter Giorgio Morandi, whose quiet still lifes of vases belied intense emotional focus. Ward’s new show is also a reflection on the pandemic and the makeshift memorials erected by everyday people across New York.
“Xie Nanxing: Adverb High Command”PetzelMay 6–June 25
Xie Nanxing, Shadows of Painting, No. 5 (2021).
The artist’s first-ever New York solo show presents two recent series, “The Dwarfs’ Refrain” (2019–20) and “Shadows of Painting” (2020–21), which continue Xie Nanxing’s extended reflection on the contradictions of oil painting. Using abstract grids alongside references from photographs, the works are Nanxing’s attempts to “target” figurative painting and upend its traditions, yet retain a painterly touch and emphasis on craft, according to the gallery.
“William Wegman: Writing by Artist”Sperone WestwaterMay 5–June 18
William Wegman, Casual (2002). Courtesy of the artist and Sperone Westwater Gallery.
Texts, drawings, paintings, photographs, and videos made by William Wegman between the 1970s and today are the focus of this show, which includes many never-before-exhibited works. Altogether, the show emphasizes Wegman’s penchant for puns, wordplay, and his interest in the fluidity of language, as well as his deadpan nonsequiturs and winking embrace of banality. The show is accompanied by a new book, William Wegman: Writing by Artist, published by Primary Information and edited by Andrew Lampert, who organized the show.
“Annette Lemieux: Things Felt“Mitchell-Innes and NashThrough May 27
Annette Lemieux, Lockdown (2022). Courtesy the artist and Mitchell-Innes and Nash.
In her latest works, conceptual artist Anette Lemiuex, a member of the Pictures Generation, mines TV, film, and literary history to focus on “isolation, division, and brokenness,” according to the gallery. In one work, titled Midnight Sun and made in part from a film still from The Twilight Zone, Lemiuex depicts an artist painting in vain amid a heatwave that melts the pigment off her canvas. In part a reflection on the difficulties of the vocation, the work also references wider looming troubles ahead.
“Ellsworth Kelly”Matthew MarksMay 6–June 25
Ellsworth Kelly, Nuit de Carnaval, Haiti 1980 (2022). Courtesy Matthew Marks.
Two shows by the late Modern painter will be on view at Matthew Marks, including one focusing on little-seen postcard collages made between 1957 to 1998. The pictures, which Kelly made using found images, highlight the artist’s longstanding desire not to invent new forms, but to isolate and emphasize the many that already exist. Alongside the show, the exhibition “Ellsworth Kelly: Blue Green Black Red” at another Matthew Marks space nearby, will explore works made in those colors.
“Kerstin Brätsch: Die Sein: Para Psychics I“Gladstone GalleryThrough April 28
Kerstin Brätsch. Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise.
Kerstin Brätsch’s “Para-Psychics” works, which she made between 2020 and 2021, were done in a period of self-isolation, during which the artist developed a daily method of visualizing her “own psychic realm,” according to the gallery. The works, made in colored pencil, are partly a meditation on clairvoyance, and were inspired by the artist’s visits to fortune tellers. In the works, as the writer Saim Demircan points out, “figures occasionally appear in various states of becoming or disintegrating into their surroundings.”
“Lorraine O’Grady: Body Is the Ground of My Experience”Alexander Gray AssociatesThrough June 11
Lorraine O’Grady, Dracula and the Artist, (1991/2019). Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York © 2022 Lorraine O’Grady / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
The works in Lorraine O’Grady’s groundbreaking series “Body Is the Ground of My Experience,” presented at her first-ever New York solo show in 1991 at INTAR Gallery, have been brought together for the first time in 30 years for this show at Alexander Gray. When the series, which draws heavily on O’Grady’s interest in Surrealism, was first presented, it was intended as a shot across the bow of the formalism of Postmodern photography, and instead centered on the Black body as “a literal ground on which history acts and is unexpectedly modified,” according to the gallery.
“Tavares Strachan: The Awakening“Marian Goodman GalleryMay 6–June 11
Tavares Strachan. Photo by Brook DiDonato, courtesy the artist.
Tavares Strachan’s first solo show with Marian Goodman in New York focuses on the life of Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican-born Black nationalist and Pan-Africanist who advocated for the settlement of Liberia in West Africa as a land where Black people, including the descendants of American slaves, could determine their own future. The show also pulls in a variety of other themes and motifs (such as mathematical theorems and basketball) as a way of expanding, narrowing, and resampling historical forms.
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Berlin Gallery Weekend is back for its 18th edition this week, with some 52 participating galleries opening their doors to show works by emerging and established artists, with most galleries participating from Friday, April 29 to Sunday, May 1.
What’s on our list? We’ll be heading to Esther Schipper Gallery to see “Hempisheres,” David Claerbout’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, which brings together two large-scale video projections that incorporate found footage of an amateur film made in the 1920s mixed with digital renderings. 
Another must-see is “Mesmerizing Mesh” at Galerie Barbara Wein, featuring 26 collages by artist Haegue Yang made from hanji (traditional Korean paper) as well as two “Sonic Sculptures.”
But there’s a lot more to see. We’ve put together a list of shows we’ll definitely be checking out.
David Claerbout, Aircraft (F.A.L.) (2015–21). Courtesy of the artist and Esther Schipper.
Exhibition: “David Claerbout: Hemispheres”When: Through May 28, 2022Where: Esther Schipper, Potsdamer Strasse 81E, Berlin
Philipp Fürhofer, Waldboden (2021). Courtesy of Galerie Judin.
Exhibition: “Philipp Fürhofer: The Truths Behind“When: April 30–June 11, 2022Where: Galerie Judin, Potsdamer Straße 83, Berlin
Haegue Yang, Barbell-Powered Sunrising Soul Sheet Atop Another – Mesmerizing Mesh #79 (2021). Courtesy of Barbara Wien.
Exhibition: “Haegue Yang: Mesmerizing Mesh – Paper Leap and Sonic Guard”When:  April 29–July 30, 2022Where: Barbara Wien, Schöneberger Ufer 65, 3rd Floor, Berlin
Wolfgang Laib, Reishäuser. Courtesy of Buchmann Galerie.
Exhibition: “Wolfgang Laib”When: April 29—June 25, 2022Where: Buchmann Galerie, Charlottenstraße 13, Berlin
Anton Henning, Pin-up No. 244 (2019). Courtesy Galerie Michael Haas.
Exhibition: “Anton Henning: Future and Grace, No.1”When: April 29–June 25, 2022Where: Galerie Michael Haas, Niebuhrstraße 5 Berlin 
Gregor Gleiwitz, 21.06.2021 (2021). Courtesy of Setareh.
Exhibition: “Gregor Gleiwitz: XYLETEN”When: April 29–June 18, 2022Where: Setareh, Schöneberger Ufer 71 Berlin
Daniel Poller, Birds of Tegel (2022). Courtesy of Galerie Poll.
Exhibition: “Birds of Tegel: Photography by Daniel Poller”When: Through June 11, 2022Where: Galerie Poll, Gipsstraße 3 (Ecke Auguststraße), Berlin
André Thomkins, Untitled (ca. 1953). Courtesy of Kunsthandel Wolfgang Werner.
Exhibition: “André Thomkins”When: April 29–June 18, 2022Where: Kunsthandel Wolfgang Werner, Fasanenstraße 72, Berlin
Hamlet Lavastida, Untitled. Courtesy of Galerie Crone.
Exhibition: “Hamlet Lavastida: Two Two Three Nine”When: April 29–June 18, 2022Where: Galerie Crone, Fasanenstraße 29, 10719, Berlin
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Nine months ago, in an Op-Ed published on this site, curator James McAnally wondered if “outside the churn of the contemporary art world… could the slow build and release of the triennial offer a more humane pace?” 
McAnally, the executive and artistic director of the Counterpublic triennial in St. Louis, was thinking about the time needed for a cyclical event like his to incur meaningful change in the communities it serves. It’s an increasingly salient question facing many regional bi- or triennials as they attempt a difficult balance between local-level engagement and national, or even international, scope.
The question is still on McAnally’s mind as he and others prepare for Counterpublic’s next edition, the second since its founding in 2019, which runs from May 15 to August 15, 2023. (The show was delayed a year because of the pandemic.)
Bringing together 28 artists and collectives, plus a handful of guest curators, the three-month show will focus “on public memory and reparative futures—how history is told, held, and healed, and how the future can be collectively envisioned towards new liberated lifeways,” according to project organizers.
“The invitation for the curators, for our community engagement team, and now for the artists, has always been to think along a different scale of time,” McAnally told Artnet News. “The invitation was to think ancestrally: What have we inherited? What are we leaving behind?”
A preparatory sketch for David Adjaye’s planned Counterpublic installation. Courtesy of the artist.
As for the latter question: quite a bit, it seems. Among the 30 commissioned installations planned for the exhibition, four will be site-specific and permanent. 
Most notable among these is a monumental earthwork conceived by architect David Adjaye to be installed at the Griot Museum of Black History. The piece will be erected from materials related to the demolished Pruitt-Igoe apartments, built in St. Louis in the 1950s as a racially segregated housing project. Elsewhere, St. Louis-based artist Damon Davis will erect a mile-long monument to Mill Creek Valley, a historically Black enclave displaced by a city-sponsored urban renewal project in ’50s. 
Other projects will be more ephemeral. For her part, 82-year-old artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith will develop a new map of St. Louis radiating from the city’s oldest remaining burial mound. New Red Order, pulling double duty as both participating artists and curators in the triennial, will likewise turn their attention to what is locally referred to as Mound City, partnering with the Osage Nation to make a film documenting the tribe’s efforts to repatriate the landmark.
Each of these projects, and the more than two dozen others planned for Counterpublic (including installations by Torkwase Dyson, Steffani Jemison, and Ralph Lemon) will be sited along a six-mile stretch of Jefferson Avenue, which bridges numerous neighborhoods and communities in St. Louis. 
“We’re working along a single street, but that street runs the full length of the city,” McAnally said. “These neighborhoods are microcosms of the nation in so many ways. They are truly dynamic and resistant to one another. They’re not a single experience.”
A rendering of Damon Davis’s Mill Creek Valley commemorative monuments. Courtesy of the artist, Great Rivers Greenway, and St. Louis CITY SC.
In a similar way, McAnally said, St. Louis extends far beyond its geographic borders in the cultural consciousness. “The questions that St. Louis faces are the questions of the moment,” he said. “These issues of public memory, of repair, of how you move forward with the weight of history.”
Allison Glenn, a former curator at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas, said an imprint of the city’s rich history can be felt in the present moment. 
“I’ve enjoyed learning about, and calling upon, the connections between the ‘founding’ of St. Louis and the larger Louisiana purchase, which are intrinsically connected to real and problematic ideologies of Westward expansion that our nation is slowly confronting,” she noted.
Glenn, who will be working primarily with Adjaye, belongs to a curatorial collective that includes Risa Puleo, Creative Time associate curator Diya Vij, and the collectives Dream the Combine and New Red Order. 
“The result is unique,” Vij said. “Instead of presenting a singular voice, we are offering a collection of responses to site and context through our own individual sensibilities and practices.”
“We’re interested in resisting the typical biennial and triennial approach of summing up a city,” McAnally added. “We wanted there to be multiple points of entry and exit.”
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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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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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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