Italian Culture, Italian Language
“La Biennale di Venezia” And How The Show Must Go On
Jun
Now in its 59th year, La Biennale di Venezia is an International Art Exhibition, considered to be one of the largest and most important contemporary visual art exhibitions in the world. The Biennale, which takes place every two years as its name suggests, opened its doors to the public on the 23rd of April and will continue until the 27th of November 2022.
The exhibition began in 1893 by the Venetian City Council as an exhibition of Italian art to celebrate the anniversary of the then reigning King Umberto. Since the first decades of the 20th century, the event has become progressively international and this year is no different with 80 National Participations, five of which are participating for the first time.
This year’s exhibition themes are transformation and metamorphosis. To encompass this, the exhibition is called, “The Milk of Dreams,” derived from the title of a Surrealist book by Leonora Carrington in which the author describes a magical world where life is constantly re-envisioned, “a world where everyone can change, be transformed, become something or someone else.”
The coordinator of this year’s biennale is Cecilia Alemani, who is not only the first Italian woman to hold this position, but also the past curator of the Italian Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2017 and Director and Chief Curator of High Line Art in New York. She also faced a major hurdle with this year’s event; the pandemic. She said, “The Biennale sums up all the things we have so sorely missed in the last two years: the freedom to meet people from all over the world, the possibility of travel, the joy of spending time together, the practice of difference, translation, incomprehension, and communion.”
