The Jury of the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia - comprising Stephanie Rosenthal, Defne Ayas, Cristiana Collu, Sunjung Kim and Hamza Walker - awarded this morning the Biennale prizes.
Golden Lion for Best National Participation went to Lithuania's performance piece "Sun & Sea (Marina)"; Arthur Jafa got the Golden Lion for the Best Participant, and Haris Epaminonda scooped the Silver Lion for a Promising Young Participant. Besides, the Belgium Pavilion, Mexican artist Teresa Margolles and Nigerian artist Otobong Nkanga all got a special mention.
Curator Ralph Rugoff and Paolo Baratta, President of la Biennale, awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to artist, performer, essayist and poet Jimmie Durham.
In April when Durham was announced as the Lifetime Achievement award recipient, Rugoff stated in a press release: "His generously expansive artistic practice spans many media, including drawing, collage, photography and video, but he is best known for his sculptural constructions, often made from natural materials as well as inexpensive common objects that evoke particular histories."
Some of these sculptures can be admired in the Arsenale section: the pieces are made with natural materials and everyday items including furniture parts, industrial elements and used clothes. So you may get a musk ox made with scaffoldings covered with piles of assembled clothes from which emerges a maimed skull with a jaw replacement in wood.
Durham calls these pieces "illegal combinations with rejected objects" as they recreate the size of the animal, but they are also the vision of the artist, who has a unique interpretation of these fantastic beasts that combines the human and the animal aspects (his musk ox seems indeed to be wearing the leather jacket that forms its body…). The pieces also point at the species under threat because of human-induced climate change.
As Rugoff added in the press release: "These sculptures are often accompanied by texts that drolly but incisively comment on Eurocentric views and prejudices. Insistently invoking the limits of Western rationalism and the futility of violence, his work has also frequently made reference to the oppression and misunderstanding of different ethnic populations around the world by colonial powers. Durham typically treats this material without the slightest trace of ponderous gravitas; instead, he forges razor-sharp critiques that are infused with shrewd insight and wit, and that pleasurably demolish reductive ideas of authenticity."
There is also another piece by the American artist accompanied by a text in the Central Pavilion at the Giardini. This newly commissioned work is entitled "Black Serpentine" and consists in a framed slab of serpentinite, a silicate stone.
Durham detailed the journey of the slab with a text exhibited next to the stone: the slab was excavated in northeast India, close to the border with Myanmar by local people from the Loi, Kuki and Naga tribes.
The slab was taken to Mumbai, then loaded onto a container and sent by ship through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean Sea. Through the Strait of Gibraltar it reached the Atlantic and the port of Hamburg. The slab then travelled on a train to Leipzig, arrived by truck to Hartha and was then transported to Berlin, where Durham lives and works. It was then sent to Mestre by truck and arrived in Venice by barge.
The beautiful slab of serpentinite hides a dark story, though, as it hints at the way the West exploits undeveloped countries where stones are excavated by underpaid workers. The stone is therefore an inanimate object, silent yet loaded with stories to tell to people willing to listen.
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