ARTMargins Online

Contemporary art across the evolving global peripheries

Tagged: Venice biennale

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Klara Kemp-Welch ·

Security in Ruins. Review of the 61st International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia

The 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, May 9 – November 22, 2026. 

This edition of the Biennale has been beset by dissent and protest, most notably worker strikes and the resignation of the jury protesting the participation of Russia and Israel. The Biennale organizers responded to these protests heavy handedly with reinforced policing throughout the city and by taking the extraordinary measure of devolving the selection of the winners of the main prize to the general Biennale public, in what can only be read as a crudely populist gesture. Artists and cultural workers have initiated … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Tobias Rosen ·

Locals Nowhere: Global Histories of Labor, Art, and Migration, Summer 2024

There is no there there, Museum of Modern Art Frankfurt (MMK), April 13 – September 29, 2024

Global contemporary exhibitions have invented a new conceit: they have begun to locate migrants everywhere and nowhere. Both There is no there there at Frankfurt’s Museum of Modern Art (MMK) and the 60th Venice Biennale “Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere” are evidence of this troubling development. Though this will primarily be a review of the exhibition at MMK, the Venice Biennale is a crucial point of comparison for understanding how contemporary curators are grappling with the quandaries of migration and place … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Katarzyna Ruchel-Stockmans ·

Vernacular Modernisms, or Art in Spite of All

IN THE EYE OF THE STORM: MODERNISM IN UKRAINE, 1900-1930S, THYSSEN-BORNEMISZA NATIONAL MUSEUM, MADRID, SPAIN; MUSEUM LUDWIG, COLOGNE; THE ROYAL MUSEUMS OF FINE ARTS OF BELGIUM, BRUSSELS; THE BELVEDERE, VIENNA; THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS, LONDON; NOVEMBER 29, 2022-MAY 2, 2023

Visiting a modern art exhibition from Ukraine at this critical juncture is an uncanny experience. The modernist undertaking of the early twentieth century vividly demonstrates parallels between Ukraine’s  historical quest for independence and the country’s current resistance against Russian aggression, which began in 2014 and escalated into a full-scale war in 2022. In the Eye of the Storm… Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Klara Kemp-Welch ·

Ricochets: Ukrainian Solidarity and Resilience at the 60th Biennale di Venezia

The war in Ukraine continues to loom large at this edition of the Venice Biennale, as it did at the last, though now the nightmare unfolds in parallel with the heavily mediatized Israel-Hamas war. The city’s walls are plastered with red fly posters advertising directions to the “Nearest Bomb Shelter,” which, as a map shows, is located not far from the Ukrainian pavilion. This information vies for pedestrians’ attention with the “No Genocide Pavilion” Palestinian solidarity posters. An exhibition has been mounted in the Israeli pavilion, but a sign informs visitors that this will remain closed pending the release of … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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 by Cristina Baldacci, Marysia Lewandowska ·

“Era ora!”: Cristina Baldacci and Marysia Lewandowska discuss Lewandowska’s It’s About Time

Art historian Cristina Baldacci and artist Marysia Lewandowska discuss It’s About Time (translated into Italian as ‘Era ora!’), her Special Project in the Pavilion of Applied Arts (curated by Ralph Rugoff) for the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Based on records of meetings held by the Mayor of Venice (Riccardo Selvatico) between 1893 and 1895, the project focuses on the absence of women from art history, taking the Biennale as a case in point.

As part of her project, Lewandowska invited a group of Italian women practitioners(L. Cavorsi, G. Damiani, V. Facchin, A. Ongaro, … Read more

Red Discussion 2

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Maja Ćirić ·

Parole, Parole (As a Counter-Hegemonic Gesture): Red Discussion No. 2 (Pavilion of the Republic of North Macedonia; Maja Ćirić)

Parole, parole(The reference is to the famous Italian duet performed in 1972 by Mina and Alberto Lupo about appealing yet hollow, empty words.) (As a Counter-hegemonic Gesture): Red Discussion No. 2, part of Subversion to Red by Nada Prlja for The Pavilion of The Republic of North Macedonia

The number of professionals in the fields of the arts and humanities who are capable of critically reflecting upon the planetary condition appears to be small. Fewer still are those who express any critical, communal, or selfless interest in connecting the legacy of the arts and humanities to the … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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 by Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli ·

Masters on Masters: When the Biennale Goes Meta (Russian Pavilion; Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli)

There is nothing unusual about famous gallerists curating national pavilions at the Venice Biennale, but it is another thing to have Mikhail Piotrovsky (the director of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg) curate his country’s pavilion by inviting artists to engage with the history of the museum and its collection, thus turning the Biennale pavilion into a commentary on the Hermitage.  Piotrovsky has orchestrated a complex metacommentary on the relation of the national pavilion to Russia’s “national treasure” that houses the works of many of the world’s Renaissance and Baroque masters—French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and Flemish.

The Russian Pavilion … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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 by Sven Spieker ·

Igor Grubić, Traces of Disappearing (In Three Acts) (Croatian Pavilion; Sven Spieker)

Igor Grubić, Traces of Disappearing (In Three Acts), Croatian Pavilion, 58th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, May 11-November 24, 2019.

Igor Grubić’s long-term photographic project Traces of Disappearing (In Three Acts) is a few steps down from the stately abode on the Canale Grande that is home to the Prada Foundation, where a sprawling show of the work of Jannis Kounellis is on view at the same time. The contrast between the two venues, and the works exhibited inside, could not be more striking: from the Venetian palazzo to the rough, workshop-like space with a low ceiling … Read more