‘The Milk of Dreams’ @ The Venice Biennale 2022
The 59th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, The Milk of Dreams, offers a fascinating amalgamation of worlds reimagined. 213 artists from 58 countries aim to alter our pre-existing ideas around life on earth and what it truly means to be human, each providing their own interpretations of the Biennale’s key themes: "the representation of bodies and their metamorphoses, the relationship between individuals and technologies, and the connection between bodies and the Earth.”
From dystopian sensory disruption at the Swiss National Pavilion to Studio Drift’s first aerial drone performance at TBA21-Academy’s Ocean Space, this roundup looks at five elements that make up the 2022 Biennale–all poignantly exploring space, history, and human existence. Housed in curiously dark spaces in contrast to the blinding Venetian sun, each offers a solemn and mystical space for reflection and profound thought in both physical atmosphere and conceptual content.
Latifa Echakhch, The Concert, 2022. Swiss pavilion, Venice. Photo by Samuele Cherubini.
The Concert by Latifa Echakhch @ Switzerland’s National Pavilion in Giardini.
“I want people to exit the exhibition as they would a concert, with accelerated heart rates, and their heads full of fragments that reconstitute themselves in the form of variations.”
Latifa Echakhch, The Concert, 2022. Swiss pavilion, Venice. Photo by Annik Wetter.
If Nietzsche once wrote that “those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music,” Latifa Echakhch’s sensory orchestration conducted at the Swiss National Pavilion in Giardini might just take you to Mars.
Based between Martigny and Vevey and representing Switzerland inside Giardini, it could be argued that Moroccan-born Echakhch is this Biennale’s very own Superwoman. By manipulating natural continuity and movement, she reverses the clock to explore sequential order and the human body’s perception of time. A + B = C. Or does it?
As you step into the space, echoed only by the sound of feet on gravel, time immediately starts to warp, the clock hand dragging counter-clockwise. Starting with bright, broad daylight and slowly rewinding to the evening before with each new breath, massive straw sculptures come into view, each an enigmatic contemporary manifestation of traditional Swiss folk art. Constructed using recycled material from previous biennales, they begin at high noon as ghostly remnants, present lifeless shells of their past revitalised selves; charred, splintered, and sunken into the ground dusted with ash, a reference to the ritual burning of the “Böögg” on Zurich's Sechseläutenplatz to bid farewell to the winter season.
Latifa Echakhch, The Concert, 2022. Swiss pavilion, Venice. Photo by Samuele Cherubini.
If light is the strongest environmental time cue that regulates the human body's internal clock, The Concert seeks to seductively disrupt it through rhythmic, retinal chaos. Passing through hues of electric sunset-red into total midnight darkness, bursts of fragmented light correspond to rhythms composed by percussionist Alexandre Babel, challenging the functions of the eye and sending its assembly line into overdrive. Revealing enlivened sculptures in varying states of catharsis, conversing and releasing, their bodies reaching up and out, the cornea attempts to focus, bending the light through the pupil. The lens attempts to focus it correctly onto the retina, where photoreceptors then transform it into electrical signals. These travel from the optic nerve to the brain, resulting in the images we see. In here, visual vertigo is guaranteed. Toying with the interaction between the eyes and ears and how they each process and experience sound, the space is pitch-black and silent, flipping the two senses and forcing you to experience sound through sight–and at the speed of light.
The installation, somehow simultaneously calming and unsettling, is a metaphor for the Biennale itself: an artistic wave of catharsis that crashes through linear time and quietly recedes, leaving nothing but empty space and silence.
TOTEM (2022) by Wallace Chan @ Fondaco Marcello.
“This exhibition is influenced by my personal journey of contemplation and curiosity about life, nature and the mysteries of the universe. I am interested in exploring the mystery of matter and form and understanding the distinctions between the imagined illusory space and real physical matter.”
Wallace Chan, TOTEM, 2022. Fondaco Marcello, Venice. Photo by Giacomo Cosua. Photo courtesy of the artist.
In reference to Freud’s belief in the totem's role as the guardian spirit of clans, Chinese multi-disciplinary artist Wallace Chan and curator James Putnam return to the 2022 Venice Biennale with an immersive installation, TOTEM. Winding through the twists and turns of many Venetian alleys, as if guided by serendipity, visitors reach Fondaco Marcello which stands directly in front of the Grand Canal. The reception space is drenched with natural light from the waterfront terrace, where viewers can devour a classic view of the floating city. However, it’s inside a curtain-veiled chamber that Chan finesses a parallel universe and explores the humanity between materials and space.
Wallace Chan, TOTEM, 2022. Fondaco Marcello, Venice. Photo by Massimo Pistore. Photo courtesy of the artist.
TOTEM was created with the unassembled parts of a 10-metre-high sculpture Titans XIV which, when constructed, was not destined to be disintegrated. Ever adventurous and furthering his pioneering use of titanium for large-scale sculptures, Chan dials the creative process backwards and begins a new journey of introspection in his latest work. Scattered across the chamber’s floor, the titanium and iron parts removed from the giant sculpture configure a maze in the darkened space; like an archaeological excavation in a cave. Instead of directing the viewer’s gaze up at a spectacle, the work invites us to look at our footsteps as we pace through the installation, reflecting on what the universe has to offer in informing human existence. Hard to go unnoticed is the recurring motif of a peaceful face, mimicking a sleeping Buddha, that asserts a state of peacefulness amidst the apocalyptic ambience. Chan explains, “they symbolise the existence of a spirit, Gaia or Mother Nature. To me, it is not about creating symbols but rather a reflection of the spiritual practices of the self…The faces I created are probably influenced by religions, those of Gaia and Guanyin. The faces appeared during my spiritual practices when I sought to reach the state of ‘non-self.’”
Wallace Chan, TOTEM, 2022. Fondaco Marcello, Venice. Photo by Giacomo Cosua. Photo courtesy of the artist.
The circular discoveries of the self and the non-self are aided by the background soundtrack of the hissing of the Earth’s frequency. The music floats in the air, so still, emitting nature’s healing power. Around the room on its dark walls are silhouettes of the sculpture’s parts, and occasionally the viewers. At the back of the room is a diagram with instructions on how to assemble the parts back into the original standing sculpture, subtly projecting the hope of reconciliation. Connecting viewers to the fragility of the individual’s state of mind in the face of the present-day world order, TOTEM invokes reverence for the history of human civilisation and the infinity of nature.
Flowers from Garden of the Metamorphosis in the Space Capsule (1968) by Tetsumi Kudo in Arsenale.
“No matter how, it is important to think about the relationship of polluted nature to the proliferation of electronics… the decomposition of humanity (humanism) and the old and traditional hierarchy of values.”
Tetsumi Kudo, Flowers from Garden of the Metamorphosis in the Space Capsule, 1968. Arsenale, Venice. Photo by Roberto Marossi. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.
As one of the leading figures of the 1950s Anti-Art Movement in Japan, Tetsumi Kudo’s childhood experience in the Second World War consequentially shaped the societal scepticism reflected in his artistic creations. Concerned with the relationships between ecology, humanity, and technology, the late artist adopted a progressive approach in his practice, often using uncanny and grotesque motifs.
In the 2022 Biennale, Kudo’s work is displayed against a black backdrop inside a narrow passageway, illuminated only by the artwork, at Corderie in the Arsenale. Ten stalks of oversized flowers with petals made of synthetic materials dyed in vibrant fluorescent colours are lit by UV light, transporting viewers to an eerie, dystopian space. As suggested by the title, these flowers reference the Garden of Metamorphosis, however, the artwork confers a mystic twist on the idea. The organic process of transformation is enslaved in the commodified and manufactured embodiment of nature, with such beauty appreciated not in natural daylight but only through artificial ultraviolet radiation. The employment of technology in the work’s artistic production has uprooted the conventional perception of a natural phenomenon. Is the evolution of mankind, as with nature, absorbed by technology too?
Tetsumi Kudo, Flowers from Garden of the Metamorphosis in the Space Capsule, 1968. Arsenale, Venice. Photo by Roberto Marossi. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.
Created over fifty years ago, the artwork’s post-natural vision is well preserved in a “space capsule” and remains strikingly relevant to contemporary debates in the art world, especially on the topics of sustainability and technology. In a rapidly changing world, we’ll always have Kudo’s timeless artistic philosophy to fall back on to further investigate our ways of life.
Diplomazija Astuta by Arcangelo Sassolino, Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci, & Brian Schembri @ Malta’s National Pavilion in Arsenale.
“I believe that by applying physics (speed, pressure, gravity and, in the case of the Malta Pavilion, heat) to materials there is a new possibility for sculpture since you can liberate it from the form, from its static dimension.”
In a different manifestation of the conceptual quest to turn back the clock, Maltese artists Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci and Brian Schembri and Italian artist Arcangelo Sassolino represent Malta’s National Pavilion and offer respite from the Venetian heat with a kinetic installation rooted in Maltese history. The trio turns tragedy into induction technology with a contemporary reinterpretation of Caravaggio’s seminal Baroque altarpiece, The Beheading of St. John the Baptist, completed in 1608 and still hanging in Malta’s St. John’s Cathedral for which it was commissioned.
Arcangelo Sassolino, Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci, & Brian Schembri, Diplomazija Astuta, 2022. Malta pavilion, Venice. Photo by Agostino Osio - Alto Piano.
Melted in real time, seven molten steel droplets fall into their corresponding rectangular water basins, each representing a subject depicted in the original painting. The melted metal is collected daily and returned to a nearby Venetian steel factory that made the installation’s coil in an effort to encourage sustainability efforts. Timed with a rhythmic Gregorian hymn, the sizzling metal’s hissing and spitting as it plunges into the water and cools is the exhibition’s only accompanying sound, referencing the moments in between the material’s before and after states and timing the release of each drop.
Lit only by the glow of hot metal, the pavilion’s atmosphere feels otherwordly and detached from emotion, subtly sinister and completely subservient to the whims of the falling steel. Freeing it from its form and more broadly referencing the butterfly effect, the common metaphor for Edward Lorenz’s ‘chaos theory’ that deals with the unpredictability and nonlinearity of life, the biblical becomes the physical through manipulation of materiality. What was once an act of unspeakable violence becomes something else entirely; calm, controlled, and almost unusually aloof.
By bringing the brutality of the beheading into a contemporary context in relation to today’s many global injustices, the artists remind us that art is and has always been essential in representing society’s various dogmas and the failures of human progress throughout different eras. Innovatively referencing the Biennale’s overarching theme of a world reimagined and perhaps resituated, Diplomazija Astuta is a gloriously visceral example of the importance of the art history canon in healing from the past and influencing future generations.
Social Sacrifice (2022) by DRIFT @ Ocean Space, Chiesa di San Lorenzo.
“True evolution comes from adaptation and from getting into unknown and uncomfortable situations, to learn and become better. We have a massive challenge ahead of us. If we understand how nature works in uncertain circumstances, it will become easier to accept and embrace that we have to go step by step and constantly change and adapt to remain a part of the evolution of this earth.”
DRIFT, Social Sacrifice, 2022. Chiesa di San Lorenzo, Venice. Photo by Ossip van Duivenbode. Photo courtesy of DRIFT.
At the intersection of nature, humanity, and technology, DRIFT pioneered an indoor aerial drone performance in the Chiesa di San Lorenzo for the 2022 Biennale. By way of extensive study on behaviour in nature, the artists compiled the findings into a choreographed tech performance to showcase the power of collective behaviour. Staged in a space totally covered in darkness, a buzzing war begins in the air with the inhabitant white drones defending against the invading red drones. The tension is further aggravated through the curated background music of Beethoven and Mozart. The performance takes viewers into an underwater-like environment to follow the 100 AI-programmed drones like two antagonistic schools of fish.
DRIFT, Social Sacrifice, 2022. Chiesa di San Lorenzo, Venice. Photo by Ossip van Duivenbode. Photo courtesy of DRIFT.
Examining the individual free will vis-à-vis the freedom of society as a whole through battle and dance, when the same school of drones are in close proximity to the viewer, they shine more brightly, and when they’re more remote, they fade out. To the drone fish, adaptive swarming behaviour is the answer to riding out the storm. Assuming there is an omniscient presence at the pinnacle of the animal kingdom, human beings still have much to learn from the gifted intelligence of other species and the wonders of nature. The underwater space created in Chiesa di San Lorenzo allows us to dive deeper into the very core of our relationship with nature and technology.
DRIFT, Social Sacrifice, 2022. Chiesa di San Lorenzo, Venice. Photo by Ossip van Duivenbode. Photo courtesy of DRIFT.
Upon reflection, the 2022 Venice Biennale urges us to step back from a more conventional view of the exhibition under the gleaming Italian sun and dive into a parallel universe of darkened spaces. Instigating thoughtful discussions framed by fundamental issues pertaining to the development of human civilisations from past and present to future, The Milk of Dreams feels closer to reality than ever–however reimagined it may be.
The 2022 Venice Biennale is on view until 27 November 2022. For more information, click here.
Alison Lo and Rhiannon Roberts
En Plein Air Editor and Editor-In-Chief, MADE IN BED