The new Australia Pavilion, seen here from the Rio del Giardini that bisects the gardens, was designed by Denton Corker Marshall. Meant to be contemporary and sophisticated, the solid black box with a white-cube interior (repleted with concrete floors) draws comparisons to a blue-chip art gallery or a design hotel. Fortunately, the old building—which hosted 13 art biennales—was repatriated to Australia, and the new structure provides much needed facilities (a restroom and storage areas), plus solar panels on the roof.
Inside the Australia Pavilion, by contrast, are the unpretentious, folksy and dystopian works of FIONA HALL, presented in a darkened room like a cabinet of curiosities. Many of the recent works in Hall’s “Wrong Way Time” were created with camouflaged fabric from military uniforms. For this series, “Kuka Iritija (Animals from Another Time)” (2014), the Adelaide-based artist worked with 11 Aboriginal artists from the Tjanpi Desert Weavers collective to create animals that “preserve the memory of creatures that roamed the land before the effects of climate change.”
Korea, the last permanent pavilion built in the Giardini, got a high-tech makeover from the inside with seven high-definition film projections by MOON KYUNGWON & JEON JOONHO, from their series “The Ways of Folding Space & Flying” (2015), which blends futuristic depictions of humans with ancient spiritual desires to travel across time and space.
In the neighboring Japan Pavilion is CHIHARU SHIOTA’s red-yarn installation, The Key in the Hand. Two old boats are positioned underneath the yarn weave, threaded with thousands of old keys, intended to represent the gathering of memories.
In the Denmark Pavilion, entitled “mothertongue,” DANH VO combines references to horror films with art history and violence with eroticism. Seen here is a close-up of a custom-made tequila on a “Judas” table designed by Finn Juhl in 1949, made from Brazilian rosewood with 30 pieces of silver inlay (hence its Biblical nickname).
TSIBI GEVA covered the exterior of the Israel Pavilion with a skin of tires for “Archeology of the Present.” Inside, the Tel Aviv-based artist’s expressionistic canvases evoke cave paintings. Seen here is Lattice (2015), a cage filled with found objects from modern life.
The German Pavilion contains a group show entitled “Fabrik,” which bisects the building into two levels, creating a series of hot, airless rooms in which to look at dense, time-intensive projects. The standout, despite the unpleasant environment, is HITO STEYERL’s video The Factory of the Sun (2015), about a video-game protagonist’s work in an motion-capture studio with virtual dancers trying to enact their autonomy.
Moving from the Giardini to the renovated spaces of the Arsenale, the Tuvalu Pavilion was created by Taiwan-born, self-declared “eco artist” VINCENT JF HUANG, who has been documenting the fate of this Pacific island on the verge of being submerged by rising sea levels. The “flooded” pavilion, consisting of just “water and sky,” recalls the fate of Venice itself and its acqua alta, or recurring high tides.
The China Pavilion, “Other Future,” organized by China Arts and Entertainment Group under the Ministry of Culture, pronounced that “chaos and orderliness are not decided by the minority . . . the behavior of the masses creates order, direction and the future.” Unfortunately, reflecting a new societal fixation on Buddhism, the pavilion has a track record of presenting exoticized imagery of China’s minority communities, in particular Tibetans. Again for this year, LU YANG’s video and sculptures have unabashedly appropriated Tibetan deities like Vajrabhairava for a video about superhuman rage. Seen here is a display of wearable sculptures called “walking nimbuses,” which allow visitors to become like Tibetan deities. (The pavilion brochure contains quotes from a Buddhist rimpoche and a scholar sanctifying the “vitality of contemporary Chinese art.”)
HERI DONO’s Indonesia Pavilion, entitled “Voyage Trokomod,” comprises this enormous rusted-iron hybrid creature referring to the Trojan horse and the Komodo dragon, with angel-like battleships suspended from the ceiling.
Located in the Sale d’Armi, the Singapore Pavilion has returned after skipping the last edition of the Biennale, with CHARLES LIM’s flatfooted exploration of the watery boundaries of the island-city, in “Sea State.”
On the ground level of the Sale d’Armi is the United Arab Emirates pavilion, curated by Sharjah Art Foundation director Sheikha Hoor al-Qasimi, entitled “1980–Today: Exhibitions in the United Arab Emirates.” Here are a selection of OBAID SUROOR’s paintings from the early 1990s, with sculptures by NAJAT MEKY from 1982 seen in front.
Turkey’s first show in its new space in the Sale d’Armi features the Istanbul-born, Paris-based installation artist SARKIS. Elaborating on a series of works shown in an Istanbul gallery two years ago, the pavilion is meant to evoke a church, with altar-like sculptures, ambient atmospheric music, stained glass windows and two, large rainbow neons at each end of the hall. While the Armenian genocide of 1915 was the obvious, unspoken subtext, there were also familiar images from Turkey’s Gezi Park protest movement in 2013 and of slain Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, whose outspokenness on the genocide led to his assassination.
Located just outside the entrance to the Arsenale, the Hong Kong Pavilion, “The Infinite Nothing,” featured a cycle of video projections by TSANG KIN-WAH, inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche’s pronouncement of the death of god during the late 19th century.
Next to the Hong Kong exhibit is the pavilion of China’s other SAR, Macao. “Path and Adventure” features installations and paintings by 79-year-old, Shanghai-born MIO PANG FEI. Having lived in Macao since 1982, Mio has explored fusions of Chinese calligraphy and landscape painting with tactics of installation art and oil painting, in a sui-generis style he calls “Neo-Orientalism.”
Of all the off-site national pavilions, the New Zealand Pavilion had the most incredible space: the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana’s “Monumental Rooms” in San Marco plaza, as well as the international arrivals area at Marco Polo Airport. There at the airport, among 15th-century world maps and globes, beneath paintings by Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese, is Berlin-based SIMON DENNY’s project “Secret Power,” which looks at the US-led global surveillance network, known as the Five Eyes alliance—the details about which were revealed in the classified information leaked by Edward Snowden in 2013.
The Taiwan Pavilion—while not an official national pavilion, because the Venice Biennale bows to the Chinese government’s refusal to recognize the Republic of China (Taiwan)—is consistently an experimental one. This year’s edition features multimedia installation artist WU TIEN-CHANG, whose “Never Say Goodbye” considers the Palazzo delle Prigioni’s former use as a prison. Projected figures are accompanied by melancholic music and glimmering stage lights, capturing the conflicted moods of postwar Taiwanese society.
The first independently organized Iran Pavilion, “The Great Game,” curated by Marco Meneguzzo and Mazdak Faiznia, admirably tried to bring together 40-odd artists from the regions surrounding Iran to look at the colonialist struggles for Asia. Unfortunately, the layout and structure, with white-walled partitioned areas, resembled an art fair, and many artworks were not fully installed before the opening. Here is a bust and photograph by WAFAA BILAL, representing the Iraqi Ba’ath party’s desire to shoot a golden state of Saddam Hussein into space, and on the left are prints by BANI ABIDI.
“Other Home,” Mongolia’s pavilion showcasing artists, UNEN ENKH and ENKHBOLD TOGMIDSHIIREV, was inspired by organic materials and Mongolia’s nomadic traditions and is displayed in this strongly shamanist presentation.
“Tie a String Around the World,” the first Philippines Pavilion in 51 years, shared a space with the Mongolia Pavilion. The former featured MANUEL CONDE’s black-and-white film Genghis Khan (1950), which was included in the 1952 Venice Film Festival; a new film by MANNY MONTELIBANO called A Dashed State (2015), about China’s occupation of waters around the Philippines; and JOSE TENCE RUIZ’s Shoal (2015), a red-felt-covered ship form referencing the Sierra Madre reef.
The Thailand Pavilion, “Earth, Air, Fire & Water,” features metal sculptures by KAMOL TASSANANCHALEE, who earned the National Artist designation in Thailand in 1997.
The Cyprus Pavilion, “Two Days After Forever,” features CHRISTODOULOS PANAYIOTOU’s installations that reflect on the history and objects of archeology. Seen here is The Price of Copper (2012), which comprises a copper sheet sourced from the oldest copper mine in the world (Skouriotissa, in Xeros) and a basic water circulation system to transform the material into an ersatz fountain. In front is a folded, blue theater backdrop, for a performance hosted on May 6 in the Teatro Goldoni.
One of two Azerbaijan pavilions, this one features paintings and sculptures by JAVAD MIRJAVADOV (known as Mirjavad), who was a formative artist in the 1950s, though under-recognized in his lifetime.
The Armenia Pavilion received a significant re-boot from the Lyon-based Bullukian Foundation, which organized “Armenity,” a show of artists from the Armenian diaspora at the Mekhitarist Monastery on the island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni, curated by Adelina Cüberyan v. Fürstenberg. Carefully installed in the complex’s pristine spaces, works by HAIG AIVAZIAN (Beirut), ANNA BOGHIGUIAN (Cairo), HERA BÜYÜKTAŞÇıYAN (Istanbul), MEKHITAR GARABEDIAN (Aleppo/Ghent) and others investigate ideas of memory, history and identity among a vastly dispersed population. Here are paintings by Anna Boghiguian.
Also at the Armenia Pavilion, RENE GABRI (Tehran) and AYREEN ANATAS (Bethlehem) has created a narrative about the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman empire through type-written notes, historical images and small objects—a dense, convoluted narrative. The pavilion deservedly won the Biennale’s Golden Lion award.
