 "Social upheaval as art")
It was in 1895 that the first international art show was held in Venice at the historic Giardini park. Nearly 120 years later la Biennale di Venezia has continued to weather tumultuous socio-political times, radical cultural movements and the technological revolution. The ever-changing global landscape during these years has been interpreted and reinterpreted by artists from across the world at this prestigious event. The 56th edition, to be held in May, is going to be no different with 136 artists and collectives questioning the political and social upheavals of modern times through objects, images, words, movements and ideas. Even though India doesn't have a national pavilion in Venice, select artists from the country will be engaging with and reacting to this year's central project, "All The World's Futures".
NAEEM MOHAIEMEN AND BANI ABIDI
Three artists represented by Kolkata's Experimenter Gallery will showcase their artworks, some original, some old, at the main exhibition. "Naeem Mohaiemen, who works in Dhaka and New York, will be showing a new film that's currently under production," says Prateek Raja, director, Experimenter. "And Bani Abidi [she shuttles between Karachi and Delhi] will be showing a previous printed works titled Security Barriers." The digital prints are a design survey of sorts of the security barriers on the streets of Pakistan. "These are a series of ongoing drawings in which I have set out to document meticulously exclusionary architecture and objects which one sees in cities all around us," Abidi had explained in an interview to Asia Art Archive. "It's a global apartheid, generated by heavy doses of fear that we consume daily."
QUESTIONING IDEAS OF IMPERIALISM
RAQS MEDIA COLLECTIVE
The third participant from Experimenter is the Raqs Media Collective, which will be undertaking a new effort called Coronation Park. It comprises a set of nine sculptures on plinths ranging from 4m x 4m x 4m to 9 m x 9 m x9 m. "Coronation Park is envisaged as a poignant, surreal and comic encroachment into the Giardini with large-scale pedestals made of bitumen and paraffin coated plaster relic sculptures," says Monica Narula, one of the members of the Collective.
She elaborates that while the work is anchored in reference to the specific history of how British Raj saw itself in India, it will breach that specificity to mark the fragility and hubris of dreams of global imperial domination of any kind. "The work plans to transform the Giardini into an image of premonition by layering the walk through the garden as a movement through uprooted histories of imperiums," she says.
SHILPA GUPTA AND RASHID RANA
Keeping in mind the underlying thread of the main exhibition, which is constant realignment, adjustment and motility, Gujral Foundation will present "My East is Your West". The official collateral event at the viennale, the project has been curated by Natasha Ginwala and brings together Shilpa Gupta from India and Rashid Rana from Pakistan. The event was born out of the desire to reposition the complex historical relations between India and Pakistan and will present a shared cultural cartography. The project questions the idea of a world in which India and Pakistan had not been divided. Both Gupta and Rana develop a series of works that will capture the essence of a people divided, a shared history entangled by conflict, of location, dislocation and transnational belonging.
NAEEM MOHAIEMEN AND BANI ABIDI
Three artists represented by Kolkata's Experimenter Gallery will showcase their artworks, some original, some old, at the main exhibition. "Naeem Mohaiemen, who works in Dhaka and New York, will be showing a new film that's currently under production," says Prateek Raja, director, Experimenter. "And Bani Abidi [she shuttles between Karachi and Delhi] will be showing a previous printed works titled Security Barriers." The digital prints are a design survey of sorts of the security barriers on the streets of Pakistan. "These are a series of ongoing drawings in which I have set out to document meticulously exclusionary architecture and objects which one sees in cities all around us," Abidi had explained in an interview to Asia Art Archive. "It's a global apartheid, generated by heavy doses of fear that we consume daily."
QUESTIONING IDEAS OF IMPERIALISM
RAQS MEDIA COLLECTIVE
The third participant from Experimenter is the Raqs Media Collective, which will be undertaking a new effort called Coronation Park. It comprises a set of nine sculptures on plinths ranging from 4m x 4m x 4m to 9 m x 9 m x9 m. "Coronation Park is envisaged as a poignant, surreal and comic encroachment into the Giardini with large-scale pedestals made of bitumen and paraffin coated plaster relic sculptures," says Monica Narula, one of the members of the Collective.
She elaborates that while the work is anchored in reference to the specific history of how British Raj saw itself in India, it will breach that specificity to mark the fragility and hubris of dreams of global imperial domination of any kind. "The work plans to transform the Giardini into an image of premonition by layering the walk through the garden as a movement through uprooted histories of imperiums," she says.
SHILPA GUPTA AND RASHID RANA
Keeping in mind the underlying thread of the main exhibition, which is constant realignment, adjustment and motility, Gujral Foundation will present "My East is Your West". The official collateral event at the viennale, the project has been curated by Natasha Ginwala and brings together Shilpa Gupta from India and Rashid Rana from Pakistan. The event was born out of the desire to reposition the complex historical relations between India and Pakistan and will present a shared cultural cartography. The project questions the idea of a world in which India and Pakistan had not been divided. Both Gupta and Rana develop a series of works that will capture the essence of a people divided, a shared history entangled by conflict, of location, dislocation and transnational belonging.
The 56th International Art Exhibition, titled All the World's Futures , curated by Okwui Enwezor, will be open to the public from May 9 to November 22, 2015 at the Giardini and the Arsenale in Venice