Venice Biennale Eco-Art Review

21 July 2022. Join us on: https://www.ecoartspace.org/event-4875465.
US: 10:00am PT, 11:00am MT, 12:00pm CT, 1:00pm ET.
EUROPE: 17:00 GMT
Australia: 4am AEDT, Thursday.

This will be an incredible gathering of curators from this year’s Venice Biennale who are engaged with artists and current discourse on how art can play a role in decolonizing nature. As well as, members who have attended the Biennale that will act as respondents. It is an opportunity to understand the changing role of art and representation of artists at the most prestigious international art event on the planet.

Main exhibitions to be presented/discussed

Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol at the Chile Pavilion, Arsenale, Photo: Patricia Watts

Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol in the language of the Tierra del Fuego’s indigenous Selk’nam people, means the “heart of peatlands.” The exhibition includes artists Ariel Bustamante, Carla Macchiavello, Dominga Sotomayor, and Alfredo Thiermann and immerses us in a material and ancestral experience of the Patagonian peatlands through a large multisensory installation and scientific experiment. review of Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol by Monika Fabijanska

Pera + Fora + Fauna, collateral event, installation shot at Archivi della Misericorida
Photo: Khaled Ramadan

Pera + Flora + Fauna, a official Collateral Event featuring Malaysian artists and collectives including: Azizan Paiman (MY), Kamal Sabran (MY), Kapallorek Artspace (MY), Kim Ng (MY), Projek Rabak (MY), Saiful Razman (MY) and Stefano Cagol (ITA), with the contribution and participation of the people of the Semai tribe from Kampung Ras, Sungkai, Perak. portperakvenice.com

Anders Sunna, Illegal Spirits of Sápmi, at The Sámi Pavilion, Giardini, Photo: Patricia Watts

The Sámi Pavilion, featuring the Sámi artists Pauliina Feodoroff, Máret Ánne Sara and Anders Sunna; celebrating the art and sovereignty of the Indigenous Sámi people, whose nation extends across the Nordic countries and into the Kola Peninsula in Russia. oca.no/thesamipavilion

Questions that these exhibitions evoke

How are indigenousness and nature affected by mainstream cultural attitudes of industrialised nations, the very nations contributing to existing environmental problems?

Can aesthetic thinking support the conservation and restoration of nature or indigenous rights and ways of life?

Can indigenous populations across the globe challenge the mainstream documented (art) history written by the non-indigenous?

Can indigenous populations achieve the liberty to collectively claim “their own history and narratives”, antagonizing the dominant discourse?

Presenters

Camila Marambio is a private investigator, a permaculture enthusiast, an amateur dancer, and a collaborative writer. In 2010, she founded the nomadic research program Ensayos on the archipelago of Karokynka/Tierra del Fuego, at the southernmost tip of South America. Ensayos brings together artists, scientists, activists, policy makers and the local community to exercise speculative and emergent forms of eco-cultural ethics at the world’s end. Work from Ensayos includes a scent, a periodical, experimental performance, a podcast, and a web series. Through her curatorial practice she strives to support the livelihoods of the communities, water, and lands where she does research and lives. As the first Guest Curator of the Extended Research Project at the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 2020, she hosted the Aconcagua Summit. Marambio hold a PhD in Curatorial Practice from Monash University, Australia (2019), a Master of Experiments in Arts and Politics from Science Po (2012) and an MA in Modern Art: Critical Studies from Columbia University (2004). ensayostierradelfuego.net

Khaled Ramadan is currently guest lecturer at Lund University, Sweden, and examiner for the Higher Artistic Educational Program, Denmark. He was previously senior consultant at the Danish Arts Council, the Maldives Ministry of Culture, NIFCA, and evaluator of Alto University professorship program. Ramadan was appointed as the curator and co-curator of Pera + Flora + Fauna at the 59th Venice Biennale, the Maldives Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, Manifesta 8 in Spain 2010, Guangdong Museum of Modern Art, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, and Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul. Ramadan is the author of Peripheral Insider, Copenhagen University Press, 2007, and co-editor of Journalism in Times of War, Al Jazeera TV Media Institute, Doha 2018. He’s also a member of International Association of Art Critics (AICA) and the Royal Danish Academy of Art Society, as well as co-founder of Laterna Magica Museum for Visual Knowledge, Denmark, and the curatorial collective Chamber of Public Secrets, with Alfredo Cramerotti 2004. Born in Beirut, Ramadan works between Europe and Asia, and is a MENA region filmmaker, curator and cultural writer. www.khaledramadan.org