Irenebrination: Notes on Architecture, Art, Fashion, Fashion Law, Science & Technology

Overpriced Accessories You Definitely Do Not Need: KFC's Wrapuette

You don't need to be a vegan to look at the latest KFC merchandise and wonder "WTF". Kentucky Fried Chicken recently announced it will soon release the Wrapuette.

Inspired by bags that were popular in the 2000s such as Fendi's "Baguette", the Wrapuette is an Italian leather handbag (apparently handcrafted by Savile Row artisans), dedicated to the British market.

It is designed to be carried as an ordinary handbag, but it is lined with an insulating layer to keep food warm so that it can perfectly hold one of the chicken chain's wraps. The bag will be available in two versions, pebbled or textured leather in KFC's signature red with a black and white image of Colonel Sanders and KFC charms. Sold in a limited edition, the handbag can be pre-ordered from KFC's online shop. Apparently, there's even a waiting list for the Wrapuette, similar to the waiting lists you may get for more exclusive handbags such as Hermès' Birkin.

According to some, it will be all the rage as it taps into logo mania and adds to it an ironic twist, it is indeed a perfect example of "fashion meets kitsch/trash", something that modern fashion houses and designers such as Demna Gvasalia at Balenciaga or Jeremy Scott at Moschino got us accustomed to.

Cheap merchandise - T-shirts, totes, baseball caps and mugs - with logos of a variety of brands and companies (think KFC, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, etc) are obvious commercial brand paraphernalia. Depending from the brand in question, these items can turn into desirable objects and even achieve a degree of coolness as they allow consumers to show their tastes not just in style, but in food and drink as well.

For decades Coca-Cola produced such merchandise and, in the last few years, the company also launched colaborations with prominent fashion brands or licensed its logo for garments produced by fast fashion retailers. So, this sort of merchandise is not innovative nor new, but it is simply part of the game.

KFC is well-known for releasing such products: its online shop sells sweats, T-shirts, baseball caps and socks, while in 2020 the company launched collaboration with Crocs, releasing some - well - very ugly co-branded clogs complete with Jibbitz™ charms made to resemble and smell like fried chicken.

The problem with KFC's Wrapuette, though, is its questionable price, while KFC's Crocs were sold at $60, the Wrapuette is directly inspired by the high-low trend with a high price point (think DHL's T-shirts by Vêtements): it retails indeed at £198 (230 Euro). Mind you, there is a charitable effort behind it. According to the website, all proceeds will go to the KFC Foundation which, it says, "supports grassroots non-profit organisations that empower young people across the UK, helping them to fulfil their potential and build a positive future."
 
Yet the supposedly collectible Wrapuette makes you think: if you want a leather bag you may indeed look for something more exclusive, like a designer bag, and if you want an insulated food bag, well, the offer is even wider. So, the question is, why would consumers in their sane minds buy it? Just for its supposedly cool logo? 

We'll see, but consumers may be unpredictable and may not like the high price point, after all, when Lidl launched its own cheap sneakers, people unexpectedly turned them into a must-have. The shoes soon went sold out and were sold on eBay for hundreds of Euros (they are currently available on eBay for 20 to 40 Euros as the hype died down...). Will this happen also for the Wrapuette? (it may be worth remembering that also KFC's Crocs went sold out and you can still find some pairs on eBay at roughly 300 Euros) We'll see, in the meantime you decide if this is ironic, iconic or simply idiotic.

International Dance Day & Fashion: Dior's "Nuit Romaine"

We have explored in multiple posts in the past few years the connections between fashion and dance, but also between fashion houses and choreographers.

AAs you may remember from a previous post, in 2018, Maria Grazia Chiuri turned to dance and to a choreographer to present her S/S 19 collection for Dior.

For that occasion, Chiuri commissioned to Tel Aviv-based Sharon Eyal a unique choreography, performed by Eyal herself and eight dancers from her company.

In 2019, Chiuri also designed the costumes for one of the three ballets of the "Philip Glass Evening" programme at the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome, "Nuit Blanche", choreographed by Sébastien Bertaud.

Yet these weren't Chiuri's first experience in ballet and dance: in 2016 she worked with the Rome Opera when she was creative co-director of Valentino, designing costumes for "La Traviata" directed by Sofia Coppola, and, in 2017, as Dior's creative director, she was commissioned costumes for the American Ballet Theatre's Works & Progress at the Guggenheim.

The connection between the French maison and ballet is particularly apt as Christian Dior collaborated with Roland Petit on the ballet "Treize Danses" (1947), and one the most famous clients of the house was dancer Margot Fonteyn (Dior himself designed her wedding dress).

A new fashion and ballet collaboration was launched today, a film on Dior’s YouTube channel, to celebrate International Dance Day. Officially established in 1982 by the Dance Committee of the International Theatre Institute, International Dance Day celebrates and promotes the discipline in all its expressive forms.

The date, 29th April, was chosen to commemorate the birthday of Jean-Georges Noverre (1727-1810), the French choreographer and dancer considered the creator of modern ballet.

Entitled "Nuit Romaine", directed and choreographed by Angelin Preljocaj and set in in the 16th-century stately Renaissance Palazzo Farnese in Rome, headquarters of the French Embassy in Italy, the film is divided into eleven musical segments.

The plot revolves around the goddess of the night, Nox, who brings darkness and sensuality to the palazzo during one of her mysterious visits.

"Nuit Romaine" stars étoile Eleonora Abbagnato, director of the ballet corp of the Teatro dell'Opera and an étoile at the Opéra National de Paris, and étoile Friedemann Vogel, with the dancers of the Rome Opera Ballet.

The film starts with two cherubs dressed in one shoulder tunics and tulle wings, dancing in the attic of the palazzo.

The palazzo is actually another character in this story: the dusty environment, wooden floors and chipped paint contrast with the immaculate white costumes in the opening section of the film, but then we discover other spaces of the building, gilded rooms and halls covered in frescoes.

As the story progresses, art becomes another protagonist: the angels we saw in the opening section pose like Raphael's cute iconic cherubs in the painter's Sistine Madonna, or recreate the Creation of Adam by Michelangelo, from the Sistine Chapel's ceiling. 

This time Chiuri avoided making the same mistakes committed in the segment of "Nuit Blanche" when Dior's logo was unnecessarily prominent on the dancers' costumes. Indeed, there's no visible logo or label here.

Nox, the main character, is dressed in a signature Chiuri by Dior nude tulle gown with a splash of black to evoke the night, but there are other notable costumes.

In one scene a painting portraying a cardinal evokes a vision of a female cardinal or popess in red pants with a sculptural pleated cape, a look accessorized with a mitre hat and magnificent rings on 8 fingers. In another segment, three dancers perform a sort of sinuous serpentine dance dressed in golden bodysuits with strips of fabrics wrapped around the torso to form a soft yet firm armour.

In one interlude the camera focuses on the dancers' feet hidden away behind colourful tapestries with a geometrical print overimposed on a houndstooth background. When the camera reveals us the dancers, we discover that they are wearing bodysuits with the same pattern.

There's more to see in the segments that follow with hand-painted costumes and tulle gowns that evoke the attires of the characters and the palette of the Carracci frescoes on the vault of the Farnese Gallery.

Accessories are not merely decorative, they do indeed have a precise purpose - creating a subtle soundscape: as they shake, the beaded necklaces, bracelets and anklets matched with white and dark grey fringe dresses covered in cascades of beads, create a rhythm that the dancers follow (even though they also prove to be a bit of a distraction as they visually break the linearity of the dancer’s bodies).

Making the costumes and the film wasn’t easy as the project was done while there was still the pandemic and travel restrictions were in place, so Chiuri worked in lockdown with half the team in Rome and half in Paris and the Biagiotti atelier in Rome lent a hand to complete the costumes.

Style-wise the costumes are at times more Vionnet than Dior, while the film is a conceptual mix combining art, architecture, religion and fashion.

In some scenes, Angelin Preljocaj tried to recreate the moods of some of the Roman tableaux in Paolo Sorrentino's film "La Grande Bellezza" (also through the operatic music, including Alexander Balus, HMV 65 Aria "Convey me to some peacefull shore" interpreted by Sandrine Piau, and Richard Wagner's Wesendonck-Lieder: 3. Im Treibhaus interpreted by Cheryl Studer) with vague references to Federico Fellini's "Roma" (the female cardinal/popess segment).

The choreographies go from conceptual and sensual to rigorous and cold, and maybe it wasn't the best choice to get Preljocaj to cover both the roles of director and choreographer as the perspective we are given is, often, that of the choreographer. A proper director would have instead been an added bonus and would have maybe injected a bit more warmth in the film.

The end of the film with the dancers on swings in vestal gowns, for example, could have maybe been avoided as it looks like a perfume advert, rather than the poetical conclusion to a dance film.

As a whole this is a great effort for International Dance Day, but it wouldn't have hurt if behind the exquisite draping, pleating, beading and hand-painting of the costumes, they would have added a bit more passion and emotion to provoke in the viewers that much needed post-pandemic catharsis Chiuri believes that art can provide us with. 

 

Tapestry as a Modernist Homage to Traditions: Safia Farhat @ The 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale Venezia

In yesterday's post we looked at an artist creating knitted abstract paintings. Let's continue the thread by exploring the work of Safia Farhat, another artist on display at the 59th International Art Exhibition in Venice. In her works, Farhat created abstractions through another technique - tapestry.

The late Tunisian painter, decorator, ceramist, weaver, teacher and editor, was a pioneer of visual arts in her country, an academic and a women's rights activist. Throughout her life she supported the valorization of traditional techniques and of Tunisia's cultural heritage, playing a key role in the history of modernism. 

Born in Radès in 1924, Safia Foudhaili, grew up in France and Tunisia, and married in the '40s Abdallah Farhat, a socialist politician supporting the fight against colonial authorities.

In 1949, she was the only woman part of the École de Tunis (Tunis School) movement, which comprised French, Italian and Tunisian artists, among them Moses Levy and Antonio Corpora. The artists part of this movement distanced themselves from colonial art and tried to reconnect their practice with Roman archaeological history, Islamic architecture and traditional crafts. They also wanted to shape a new image for the country and a new form of "Tunisianity" rooted in North African, Arabic, and African foundations.

The movement spawned many collaborations and Farhat was instrumental in creating collaborative projects between artists and artisans. She worked with artist Abdelaziz Gorgi and collectives of weavers to create monumental tapestries in which she wove a variety of narratives. Through tapestries she explored the story of Ulysses and Penelope and the epic of the Banu Hilal. She also developed pieces using a variety of techniques and materials, from stained glass to Chebka lace.

In 1956 the Code of Personal Status (CPS), set to improve the social status and education of women, was promulgated in Tunisia. Three years later Safia Farhat founded the country's first Arab-African feminist magazine - Faïza. Farhat published 62 issues of the magazine and she also became involved in campaigns for women's rights and the preservation of cultural heritage.

In the meantime, she taught at the postcolonial Institut Supérieur des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts of Tunis) and, in 1966, she was the first woman appointed director of the school. The male-dominated institution was transformed by Farhat: under her the school produced a generation of female artists and teachers. In 1982, Farhat and her husband founded the Centre des Arts Vivants (Centre for Living Arts) in Radès, where the Safia Farhat Museum was inaugurated by her niece Aïcha Filali in 2016.

At the Venice Biennale there is a two-part woven tapestry by Farhat on display in the Arsenale. Entitled "Gafsa & Ailleurs" (Gafsa and Elsewhere, 1983) and borrowed from the Centre des Arts Vivants, the 3 meter-tall tapestry combines Tunisian crafts (and in particular the tapestry technique from the southern part of the country) with European modernism.

The piece is an example of dynamism in textiles: characterised by bright and bold colours and geometric shapes and patterns, zoomorphic signs and anthropomorphic figures, the tapestry is woven from dyed, handspun wools.

The varying thicknesses, pile heights and textures form three-dimensional effects that contribute to give the impression that the material reaches out to the viewer. The tapestry features a horse galloping through a verdant landscape towards a whirlwind of colours and abstractions, a symbol of traditions encountering modernity or a modernist homage to traditions.

Image credits for this post

Safia Farhat, Diptyque Gafsa & ailleurs, 1983
Tapestry Diptych, 320 × 294 × 15 cm; 293 × 167 × 15 cm
Private Collection

The 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams. Photo by: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia

Wool Abstractions: Rosemarie Trockel's Knitted Paintings @ The 59th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia

In 1984 conceptual German artist Rosemarie Trockel started creating what she called "knitting pictures". These pieces weren't conceived as crafts: Trockel's wool artworks were indeed made using a computerised knitting machine. In this way, the artist created a tension between traditional feminine materials and techniques and masculine tools. 

Throughout the years Trockel, whose practice revolves around a variety of mediums including drawings, sculptures, videos and mixed-media installations, continued to produce both hand and machine knitted "paintings".

Trockel created a variety of knitted paintings, featuring graphic elements, vertical and horizontal stripes, geometric structures and checkerboard motifs borrowed from pattern books and women's magazines, but also political, ideological and commercial symbols including the hammer and sickle and the Playboy bunny.

The first woman to participate in the German pavilion at the Venice Biennale, in 1999, Trockel is now back in town for the 59th International Art Exhibition, where her knitted paintings made with acrylic wool on canvas framed in Plexiglas, can be admired in the Arsenale.

For this edition of the Biennale that will also pass into history for featuring a majority of female artists and non-binary subjects, Trockel presents a selection of existing and previously unseen artworks, knitted by Trockel's long-time collaborator Helga Szentpétery. 

Trockel's paintings are still subversive for many reasons: some of her knitted paintings (with repeated logos and symbols) hint at consumerism, but all these artworks made with a material and a technique associated with women's crafts, pose questions to viewers.

Through these paintings the artist questions indeed an assumed hierarchy of materials and art forms wondering why paintings should be above crafts; why works by women should be considered as embarrassing (does this have any connection with the materials used and by how they are treated?) and why female work and in particular manual labor should be devalued.

Besides, the knitted paintings also take into consideration the codified structure of the industrial production method and question authorship and originality. Trockel made indeed the blueprints for her designs, but had them produced by a technician using a machine, so the artworks are the result of a collaboration between the conceptual artist and the actual maker and between humans and machines.

Trockel is largely withdrawn from the public, but maybe she should do an installation or an arty collaboration with a knitwear designer, nothing commercial, but something that may help younger generation rediscovering her powerful paintings.

Image credits for this post

Knitted Paintings by Rosemarie Trockel at The 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams. Photos by: Marco Cappelletti. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia

Rag and Bone Girl: Tau Lewis' "Divine Giants Tribunal" @ The 59th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia

Self-taught sculptor Tau Lewis could be described as a "rag and bone artist". This is not a negative definition, but a way to honour her (sustainable) modus operandi.

In her works Lewis mainly employs indeed materials that are immediately available to her: the most extraordinary and original pieces she created so far are the ones she made when she didn't have any money or had no materials left and went to look for them not in art stores, but in thrift shops.

Born in Toronto in 1993 to a family of Jamaican ancestry, Lewis had her first studio in the Coffin Factory, Toronto; then she joined the RAGGA NYC collective and she now lives and works in Brooklyn.

She established herself among other talented young sculptors thanks to her "outsider" aesthetic, that she uses to analyse the history of the African diaspora and the representations of Black bodies, while addressing themes such as memory and recovery.

The artist believes in the potential for emotive transference in found materials (so far she has used in her works scraps of fabrics and leather, rocks and seashells, found photographs, chains, paint cans, pipes and toys, just to mention a few ones) and therefore the practice of integrating recycled materials in her works means for Lewis to allow the stories embedded in them to keep on living. At the same time, her artworks become vessels for the memories carried by the repurposed materials. 

Some of her quilted tapestries, soft sculptures and plaster figures are also very personal and intimate: in one of her first soft portraits from 2017, a monkey-like figure on a swing, Lewis incorporated her own dreadlocks. 

Lewis has so far exhibited in various institutions including MoMA PS1, New York, and Mercer Union, Toronto. In 2020 she had her first major museum acquisition when the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, bought "The Tongue and the Teeth". For the first time her work is currently being showcased in Italy at the 59th International Art Biennale in Venice.

At the Biennale Lewis is presenting (in a section of the Arsenale) monumental masks (they are three metres tall) from her "Divine Giants Tribunal" (2021) series. Seen from a distance, the masks seem to be made with soft materials following a pleasing chromatic synergy; yet, look more closely, and you will discover an entire world, as these sculptures are assemblages of leather pieces and textiles, put together through painstakingly long processes of sewing, quilting and dyeing.

The starting point for these pieces was a fur mask that the artist produced in 2016 (part of another sculpture that Lewis dismembered and redistributed into several other artworks), but also Yoruba masks and the writings of Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka.

The catalogue notes of the Venice Biennale state there are connections between Lewis' practice and the work of Gee's Bend quilters, the textiles of Faith Ringgold, the assemblages of Betye Saar, and the dreamlike "shack" sculptures of Beverley Buchanan.

Lewis employs techniques and practices associated with women's labour and crafts to talk about art, identity, bodies, nature and rituals. The upcycled materials point at what she calls physical or situational upcycling and the masks can be interpreted as talismans that welcome visitors, artworks that, rather than merely being inspired by the Black diaspora, create portals to another dimension to learn and debate key issues about revolving around the perceptions of Black people and Blackness in America.

The pieces created for Venice were physically and emotionally demanding: hand-stitched from scrap fabrics, recycled leather, fur and suede, these mythical objects fill the space in an almost magical way. 

Who knows, maybe one day we will se Lewis taking up the space of an entire national pavilion at the Venice Biennale, but you can bet that, before then, she will be invited to create installations for a fashion runways or to collaborate with a fashion house (she will be exhibiting at Paris' Fondation Louis Vuitton in 2023/2024).

There is just one dilemma that remains about her Venice Biennale installation: Lewis often embeds secret bits and pieces - talismans, hand-written poems and letters or fragments from other artworks that she created earlier - in her works to create a personal relationship with each piece and almost to imbue them with her own DNA and give them a life of their own. Guess we will never find out what Lewis buried in the masks on display in the Arsenale, but it must be some kind of powerful talisman judging from the magnetic and mesmerising power her masks have so far had on visitors.

Image credits for this post

1.
Tau Lewis
Vena Cava, 2021
Recycled leather, acrylic paint, coated nylon, steel armature
330 cm × 310 cm × 122 cm

2 - 3.
Tau Lewis
Sol Niger (With my fire, I may destroy everything, by my breath, souls are lifted from putrified earth), 2021
Recycled leather, coated Nylon, steel armature
304.8 cm × 310 cm × 122 cm

4 - 5.
Tau Lewis
Angelus Mortem, 2021
Recycled fur (mink, beaver, fox, rabbit, lamb, and sable), coated nylon, steel armature
330 cm × 355.6 cm × 116.8 cm

All works with the additional support of Stephen Friedman Gallery. Thanks to donations to the Canadian Friends Fund of La Biennale, at KBF CANADA

All images in this post show Tau Lewis' installation at the Arsenale, the 59th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams. Photos by: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia.

The Language of Artisanal Velvets for Couture Fairy Tales: Tiziano Guardini X Tessitura Bevilacqua

The International Art Exhibition in Venice is always an occasion to enjoy a variety of exhibitions and presentations organised around the city, but not necessarily linked with the Biennale.

Fashion and textile fans who love the artisanal approach should not miss for example "A Dress for Venice" (until 29th April; visiting days are Tuesday and Wednesday from 3:30pm to 4:30pm - upon reservation) an exhibition of wearable works of art on display in the historic spaces of the Tessitura Bevilacqua.

The project revolves around craftsmanship, sustainability and Haute Couture and consists in a capsule collection of six kimonos designed by Tiziano Guardini and made with textiles by Tessitura Bevilacqua.

Guardini is an eco-friendly designer who won the first Green Carpet Fashion Award in 2017. The Rome-born designer, graduated in economics, but then pursued a completely different career opting to continue his studies in fashion. Trying to escape the relentless rhythms of the industry, Guardini shifted his attention onto nature and eco-friendly couture, creating showpieces like a coat made of pine needles, or designs made with licorice roots.

Guardini recently created a collection inspired by fairy tales with patchworked images of characters from popular tales and stories including "The Little Mermaid" (View this photo) and "Alice in Wonderland".

The theme of the fairy tale also informs the six kimonos created with Tessitura Bevilacqua for the "Dress for Venice" event, based on illustrations by artist Luigi R. Ciuffreda.

The six kimonos on display among the original 18th-century looms and Jacquard machinery of the Bevilacqua workshop, feature scenes borrowed from Eastern and Western tales, including "Pinocchio", "The Little Mermaid", and "The Moon Maiden". 

Guardini used the same techniques he employed for his own collection inspired by fairy tales, but, in this case, the kimonos are made with textiles from Tessitura Bevilacqua's archive and they include soft velvets and shiny lampas, while the figures representing the fairy tale characters are recreated using a varity of fabrics to create contrasts of textures, shapes and colors.

For "Pinocchio" and "The Flower-blooming Old Man", Guardini and Bevilacqua chose an Ardis velvet with a rich 16th-century Renaissance design depicting a pomegranate motif. This fruit, a symbol of fertility and immortality, had great fame during the Renaissance because it was associated with prestige and wealth. 

Radica velvet was chosen to make the kimonos dedicated to "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Tanabata - Evening of the Seventh".

This fabric has an unusual abstract pattern giving optical illusions that recall the twisted knots naturally formed by the roots of trees.

Last but not least, the kimonos inspired by "The Little Mermaid" and "The Maiden of the Moon" are made with resplendent lampas that shine under the light thanks to a subtle silky sheen, and feature a motif of opulent tulip corollas surrounded by sinuous twists of leaves in a very elegant Art Nouveau style.  

Craftsmanship and couture play the main roles in this installation, but sustainability is another keyword behind this project. Through his kimonos Guardini tries to bring a local fabric into the future while presenting an eco-friendly vision as an asset for the territory and for new generations. This event is indeed a small step on the path that will lead to propose Venice as the World Capital of Sustainability.

The kimonos are, naturally, also an homage to Japan, guest honor of this year's edition of the Homo Faber event (through 1st May 2022)), a cultural initiative and international exhibition dedicated to contemporary art crafts, showcasing materials, techniques, and skills at the Giorgio Cini Foundation on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore and in selected ateliers and workshops all over the city. Through these events, visitors will be able to discover a wide range of materials and skills, from endangered traditional crafts to cutting-edge contemporary techniques.

The Agora in Wartime: Piazza Ucraina @ The 59th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia

In the last few weeks, we have often seen pictures from Ukraine with statues and monuments tightly covered in sandbags to protect them from being damaged by the Russian bombs and missiles. In particular we have seen the symbol of Odesa, the bronze monument of Duke de Richelieu, one of the most iconic landmarks in the city, and the statue of national poet Taras Shevchenko in Kharkiv, hidden behind a piles sandbags. A similar structure of sandbags has been recreated in the Spazio Esedra at the Giardini of the Venice Biennale. 

Entitled "Piazza Ucraina" (Ukraine Square), this open-air installation was created by the curators of the Ukrainian Pavilion Borys Filonenko, Lizaveta German and Maria Lanko (the Ukrainian Pavilion features instead work by Pavlo Makov, the official Ukrainian artist at the 59th Venice Biennale) upon invitation of La Biennale and Cecilia Alemani and with the collaboration of the Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund (UEAF) and the Victor Pinchuk Foundation.

The Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund (UEAF), a foundation launched by MOCA NGO together with independent media Zaborona, The Naked Room gallery and cultural institution Mystetskyi Arsenal to support artists and cultural workers during the war and afterwards, also compiled The Wartime Art Archive. The fund collects donations and offers opportunities to support Ukrainian independent artists, curators, art managers, researchers and non-governmental cultural initiatives.

A piazza is a meeting point, and the square dedicated to Ukraine, designed by Ukrainian architect and artist Dana Kosmina, is a place of solidarity at the 59th International Art Exhibition in Venice. The life of Ukrainians dramatically changed on 24th February this year as Russia invaded the country.

Official art events may have stopped, but Ukrainian artists have been producing other types of work to get the strength to go through the harsh reality of the war and survive. Artists reacted in different ways, from volunteering to joining the army; some of them created databases of artisans and designers to pass the time and show the rest of the world the vitality of the country, or comment about the events via posters and illustrations. Many of them also use social media to comment, and bravely document and report.

The project in Venice hopes to give voice to artists and the art community of Ukraine as well as other countries in solidarity with the people of Ukraine in the aftermath of the brutal Russian invasion. Piazza Ucraina is therefore a work in progress: while at the moment it is still more or less bare, posters and images will be layered on each other on the charred wooden structures erected next to the pile of sandbags, so that the place will be constantly updated by the Wartime Art Archive. Each work that will be displayed here will be stamped with its exact date of creation, like a piece of evidence. Besides, the space is also conceived as a place for debates and conversations reminiscent of the agora in ancient Greek city-states.

The main theme of this year's Biennale is "The Milk of Dreams" and addresses human change. The square perfectly fits with this theme as it explores the change human beings go through during a war, raising awareness about the consequences of a conflict in our times. 

"In its 127 years of existence, La Biennale has registered the shocks and revolutions of history like a seismographer," Cecilia Alemani, Curator of the 59th International Art Exhibition, stated in an official press release. "Our hope is that with Piazza Ucraina we can create a platform of solidarity for the people of Ukraine in the earth of the Giardini, among the historical pavilions that were built on the very ideal of nation-state, shaped by twentieth century geopolitical dynamics and colonial expansions."

Image credits for this post

Piazza Ucraina by the Curators of the Ukrainian Pavilion Borys Filonenko, Lizaveta German, Maria Lanko, The 59th International Art Exhibition with the collaboration of the Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund (UEAF) and the Victor Pinchuk Foundation. Open-air installation at the Giardini of La Biennale, designed by Ukrainian architect Dana Kosmina. Photo by Marco Cappelletti. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia

The Milk of Dreams: Introduction to The 59th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia

The 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (till 27th November) officially opened today. Curated by Cecilia Alemani, the event, including 213 artists from 58 countries (180 of these are participating for the first time), is entitled "The Milk of Dreams".

The title comes from a book that Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) wrote for her kids, in which she describes a magical world where life is constantly re-envisioned through the prism of the imagination, people transform and kids become animals or machines.

"It is a world where everyone can change, be transformed, become something or someone else," Alemani states in an official press release. Alemani - the first Italian woman to curate the Venice Art Biennale - conceived the event, an edition that will also pass into history for featuring a majority of female artists and non-binary subjects, as a trip that visitors take with Carrington's otherworldly creatures. These companions will take them on an imaginary journey through the metamorphoses of bodies and definitions of the human.

The theme is actually very apt for the complex times we are living in: we are constantly stressed by thoughts of the pandemic ("The Milk of Dreams" was conceived and organised in a period of instability and uncertainty, since its development coincided with the outbreak and spread of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Biennale had to be postponed), the harmful impacts on the planet of climate change and now the war in Ukraine that threatens to expand to other countries.

The Biennale tries to look at the possibilities and responsibilities that we, as human beings, have through three main themes, the representation of bodies and their metamorphoses; the relationship between individuals and technologies; the connection between bodies and the Earth.

There are also sub-themes addressed in smaller collections of artworks (including museum loans), found objects, and documents, these pieces are displayed as shows within the show (in a format that recalls the 55th International Art Exhibition, curated by Massimiliano Gioni, who is also Alemani's husband) and provide additional tools of investigation and introspection.

The German artist Katharina Fritsch and the Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña are this year's recipients of the Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement.

Alemani was first fascinated by Katharina Fritsch's "Rattenkönig" - the Rat King, a disquieting sculpture in which a group of giant rodents is crouched in a circle with their tails knotted together - at the 1999 Biennale curated by Harald Szeemann.

Since then Alemani has been attracted and in awe of Fritsch's sculptures in bright solid colours, that the curator defines as "monuments from an alien civilisation, or artefacts on display in a strange posthuman museum". 

Artist, activist and poet Cecilia Vicuña has long fought for the rights of Indigenous peoples in Chile and the rest of Latin America and her art goes from painting to performance and complex assemblages of found objects or scrap materials.

Vicuña coined the term "Arte Precario" in the mid-1960s in Chile, for her precarious works and quipus (Andean recording and numbering devices that date back to the Pre-Columbian era; they often consist of knotted strings made of cotton and other fibers. For Vicuña the quipu is "a poem in space, a way to remember, involving the body and the cosmos at once"), as a way of "hearing an ancient silence waiting to be heard."

The Golden Lion for Best National Participation went to the Pavilion of Great Britain that features Sonia Boyce's installation "Feeling Her Way".

Boyce created a highly original multi-layered pavilion, full of colourful geometries (and golden geometrical seats inspired by iron pyrite crystals), filmed performances (that took place at Abbey Road studios) and recordings of Black and female artists (Jacqui Dankworth, Poppy Ajudha, Sofia Jernberg and Tanita Tikaram).

Old CDs, cassette, albums by artists such as Shirley Bassey, Beverley Knight, Brown Sugar, and posters from Boyce's personal archive, complete the installation. The pavilion is pervaded by an energy and vitality that were missing in previous years.

Boyce also appears in a film in the French Pavilion next door, by French-Algerian, London-based artist Zineb Sedira in which she talks about cultural resistance and survival in communities of colour. The French Pavilion got a special mention at the award ceremony, together with Uganda.

The country is one of the 5 nations together with the Republic of Cameroon, Namibia, Nepal and the Sultanate of Oman, participating in the Biennale for the first time.

Curated by Shaheen Merali and on display at Palazzo Palumbo Fossati, "Radiance – they dream in time" the Ugandan participation at the Biennale features sculptural pieces made with materials like bark-clothed rafia by Acaye Kerunen and paintings by Collin Sekajugo, and it is a riot of colours, patterns, and sustainable materials.

While the Silver Lion for a Promising Young Participant went to Ali Cherri (and Lynn Hershman Leeson and Shuvinai Ashoona also got two special mentions), the Golden Lion for the Best Participant in the International Exhibition went to Simone Leigh - it is worth noting that this is the first time in the history of the Biennale that the prize has gone to a Black woman artist - with the following motivation, "for the rigorously researched, virtuosically realized, and powerfully persuasive monumental sculptural opening to the Arsenale, which alongside Belkis Ayón, provided a compelling entrée to the ideas, sensibilities and approaches constellated and animated throughout The Milk of Dreams."

Alemani is a fan of Simone Leigh's works: she installed the monumental Brick House on New York's High Line in 2019 and now included it in the Arsenale, surrounded by works by the late Cuban artist Belkis Ayón. Leigh's sculptures integrating figures of Black women with architectural elements evoke in some ways Carrington's metamorphoses. Leigh also represents the U.S. at the American Pavilion (titled "Sovereignty"). 

Boyce and Leigh are the first Black women to represent their nations in Venice in the Biennale's 127-year history.

While the 59th International Art Exhibition is not a complete return to normality after Covid-19 (restrictions have been loosened in most European countries, but the pandemic is still being monitored), Alemani highlights it is a compendium of what we have missed, from the freedom to meet people from all over the world and the possibility of travel to the joy of spending time together and learning from each other.

Image credits for this post:

1. Biennale Arte 2022 - Press Conference. Photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia

2. Leonora Carrington, "The Milk of Dreams", book cover

3. Katharina Fritsch, Elefant / Elephant, 1987, Polyester, wood, paint. The 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams. Photo by Marco Cappelletti. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia 

4. Cecilia Vicuña at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams. Photo by Ela Bialkowska. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia

5, 6, 7, 11 and 13 Awards Ceremony Photos by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia

8 - 10. Sonia Boyce: Feeling Her Way. Pavilion of Great Britain. The 59th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia 

12. Pavilion of Uganda. 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams. Photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia

14 and 15. Simone Leigh, Arsenale Installations. The 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams. Photo by Ela Bialkowska. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia

Post-Truths in Liminal Spaces: The Japan Pavilion @ The 59th International Art Exhibition, Venice

In the previous post we looked at Chun Kwang Young's works made with paper taken from discarded second-hand books. Japanese pioneering art collective Dumb Type moved instead from an 1850s geography textbook to create the installation "2022" at the Japan Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition in Venice.

Founded in 1984, the interdisciplinary collective Dumb Type is active in a variety of fields, including art, computer programming and music, and creates installations, performances and videos. Their works address a variety of social issues, including gender, race, AIDS, technology and information society.

They are known for an open-ended style with no fixed directors, but a changing roster of members participating in each new production. This year, for example, the collective has added a new member, Japanese composer and pianist Ryuichi Sakamoto.

For the Biennale the collective stripped bare the pavilion and covered with a layer of glass the hole that was opened in the floor for the installation at the 57th Venice Biennale.

The space is bare, but, along the perimeter of the structure, there are a revolving mirror system, laser devices, revolving parametric speakers and loudspeakers. The mirrors rotate at high speed, reflecting lasers that project text onto the surrounding walls.

All the texts,  taken from a geography book from the 1800s, pose simple yet universal questions. Field recordings (by Sakamoto) of voices reading the texts are emitted from rotating parametric speakers, so that the space is permeated by laser beams and sounds. The center of the room is instead empty, to symbolise a place that doesn't exist or that could exist anywhere.

Visitors are invited to enter the pavilion and consider the world we live in, a universe made of post-truths and liminal spaces, at times overcrowded, at others extremely solitary and empty.

While the installation may be considered by those art fans who prefer more visually stimulating spaces as too minimal, the idea here is to offer a quiet space where visitors can ponder about how humans communicate with each other (the laser beams and the recorded voices seem to bounce from one wall to the other, continuously reaching out and expanding) and perceive the world, while considering wider key issues such as climate change, the power of the Internet and of social media and the impact that the Covid-19 pandemic had on our lives.

Aggregates as Metaphors: Chun Kwang Young's "Times Reimagined" @ Palazzo Contarini Polignac, Venice

The 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (until 27th November) kicks off at the weekend (but the press days have already started). As this is the first post-pandemic edition of the Biennale there are a lot of expectations about the works on display at the Arsenale, the Giardini and in the rest of the city.

Among the most interesting collateral events there is a highly recommended multidisciplinary project entitled "Times Reimagined" at Palazzo Contarini Polignac.

The project combines art, architecture, and artisanal crafts as well, and includes 40 large-scale mulberry-paper reliefs, sculptures and installations created by Korean artist Chun Kwang Young, plus a site-specific architectural structure, the Hanji House, designed by Italian architect and urban planner Stefano Boeri.

Located in the gardens of the palazzo, the Hanji House is visible from the Grand Canal and dialogues with the buildings surrounding it and with the installations inside the palazzo.

As you may remember from previous posts, "Hanji" is the traditional Korean handmade paper made from the inner bark of Broussonetia papyrifera, colloquially known as paper mulberry. Due to its great resistance, hanji is also known as the "thousand years paper".

Boeri's structure is conceived as a foldable pavilion built with timber and a textile membrane on soil. It is a practical model of "paper-tree architecture" based on geometrical shapes and it is a sort of conceptualized version of Chun's eco-friendly paper art transformed into a habitable space.

The design is inspired by the playful yet meditative practice of folding paper in an infinite number of ways: to create the structure, Boeri looked at ancient East Asian practices of paper-folding and tangram and at simple geometric modularity. The result is a combination of volumes - four pyramids on the top of a parallelepiped, defining a planar surface shaped as a regular rhombus in the middle. The house is also an introduction to the theme of the infinite as it can be folded in an infinite number of ways.

From the outside, the Hanji House looks like a mysterious and futuristic structure, almost a light box or lantern illuminating the Renaissance architecture; while inside visitors will discover an immersive space with a real-time interactive art installation developed by media artist Calvin J. Lee, who transformed triangular hanji packages created by artist Chun Kwang Young into virtual form.

Hanji is at the core of Chun Kwang Young's creations: the paper used in his art is not mass-produced, but it is a handmade artisanal product.

His works consist in complex assemblages made employing "basic units of information" or "basic cells of life", that is triangular forms in various sizes, cut from Polystyrene, foam or wood, wrapped in mulberry paper and tied with hand-twisted paper strings.

The resulting sculptures are inspired by a childhood memory of small mulberry paper medicine packages with name cards hanging from the ceiling of a Chinese medicine doctor's pharmacy to protect them from insects.

The sculptures on display in Venice are inspired by the theme of the interconnectedness between living beings and the socio-ecological values of their relationships.

Inside the palazzo, the sculptures create a new sort of interconnection between different planes: Chun Kwang Young's textured topographical maps of rocky landscapes, at times featuring delicate colour gradations, take viewers on a journey through space and symbolically refer to the conflicts that regulate our modern lives.

At times these alien formations look like deformed giant mushrooms, alien plants, viruses or ruins from a city destroyed after an apocalypse. 

They expand inside the rooms of the palazzo, creating vertical columns, spheres, or giant clam-shaped configurations, while the works hung on walls create portals, powerful optical illusions that mesmerise visitors with their three-dimensional power.

Chun Kwang Young's works also create another contrast between the physical and digital realms: the folding and assembling of those tiny hanji packages that compose the basic units of his work requires a long time, but in our digital society paper is not valued that much, and books - representing knowledge, wisdom and memory - are often dimissed as something ancient and out of fashion, in favour of everything that is digital and immaterial.

Books have a central role in Chun Kwang Young's art instead as his reliefs, sculptures and installations, are made from paper taken from discarded second-hand books that were about 100 years old. 

The paper used in his works has therefore had a previous life that existed in the form of book as a storage of knowledge and information, and that now has taken a completely new life. 

Chun Kwang Young's works have only one title, "Aggregation", but they tackle a variety of sub-themes. Through his works the artist points indeed at the anxieties and uncertainties at the core of human existence. 

The sculptures also hide a socio-ecological and metaphorical message, pointing at human-caused decline of biodiversity, disruption of ecosystems and increase in diseases, as the artist urges visitors to meditate and heal through his time consuming works, but also to find a new strength and act in arts or architecture, urban planning or academia, to protect our planet and our existence.

Image credits for this post

1. Palazzo Contarini Polignac for "Chun Kwang Young: Times Reimagined", 2022. Courtesy CKY Studio, Copyright © Alice Clancy.

2 and 3. Installation views of the Hanji House for "Chun Kwang Young: Times Reimagined", 2022, Palazzo Contarini Polignac, Venice. Courtesy CKY Studio, Copyright © Alice Clancy.

4 - 11. Installation views "Chun Kwang Young: Times Reimagined", 2022, Palazzo Contarini Polignac, Venice. Courtesy CKY Studio, Copyright © Alice Clancy.