Venice Biennale: art of nationhood

Who would want to skip an appointment with the Venice Biennale? No one whose work or personal inclination takes them anywhere close to the art world. And definitely not any nation that knows this is an unbeatable occasion to show off on the world stage and choose how they want to be known in cultural circles and beyond. Not being here is like not getting an invite to art prom. Really, nobody wants that. The Biennale's curator Ralf Rugoff has decided to call this edition May You Live in Interesting Times. And in these interesting times, artists want to talk about the environment and climate change, about ethnic minorities and their right to speak, about taking refuge in tradition or uncovering the forgotten histories of the past. They're often tough conversations to have, but cultural ministries are very keen to show they're happy to host them in their national pavilions, these temporary missions on Venetian soil. Some select few nations can boast a bricks-and-mortar home of national pride in the leafy Giardini. Most of those who make their first appearance at the Biennale, though, have to make do with smaller spaces on the periphery of the action. But for this year's most-talked-about debut, Ghana wanted to make a grand entrance nowhere less than one of the exhibition's main hubs, the Arsenale. It was really important for me, for Ghanaian art and for African art, to be at the centre and not at the margins, not where African art is in a ghetto somewhere. And I think, you know, the Venice Biennale is one of the many public forums where many, many nations come together and show the best or the mastery of their arts. And so for me, it was important that we're here showing our masters as good as any nation in the world. And I think if we see that in our arts, we also see that in our politics and we see it in our economics as well. And we see it in all of these different facets. Having a permanent pavilion at the Biennale also allows nations to continuously rethink what version of themselves they want to present to the world. Do they want to be at the cutting edge? Or do they want to be the Giardini's bearers of wisdom? Do they want to be incendiary and daring? Or are there more points to be earned by playing it reliably safe? Do they want to engage with the politics of home or speak the transnational language of theory? For countries like Canada, deciding to show an inclusive face means opening up to criticism from within the walls of the pavilion too. Its decision to display art by its indigenous community for the first time in the pavilion's history meant allowing Inuit artist collective Isuma to take control. From the outset, before you even enter the pavilion, you see Canada and you see Isuma. So right away, the idea that you're encountering something, that there is a tension with the building and because it's the National Gallery of Canada, who is the commissioner of the exhibition and we're affiliated with the government of Canada, that relationship was also quite interesting and not without its own challenges. So that's been really interesting for me to experience that and to think about how to negotiate with the artists to make sure that their voice is heard, that the exhibition is what they want and that they don't end up being showing something that the country wants them to show. Those countries that do not enjoy the privilege of a permanent pavilion need not resign themselves to being sidelined. Instead, they can make a virtue of their ability to choose the location that suits them best. And that's not just because there are countless, jaw-droppingly beautiful palazzos hiding down Venice's canals. The right setting can help amplify the message of a work of art. In the case of Dane Mitchell, who's representing New Zealand this year, having a project that's spread all over Venice made an awful lot of sense. His work, called Post Hog, consists of enormous lists of things that no longer exist, from extinct bird species to abandoned laws. Other than being printed out inside the beautiful Palazzina Canonica, those lists are broadcast from communication towers disguised as pine trees in Venice's alleys and parks. At the early stages of the project, I was thinking about the Giardini and what that is. It's a garden, and a garden is a construct. It's a manufactured form of nature. Of course, it's also a very peculiar geopolitical map of a moment in the 20th century, and we're absent from there. We are not in there. So that kind of form of absence was quite interesting to me, this sort of cultural, political absence from that central conversation in the Giardini. So I started thinking about these cell towers as ways to be a contagion in the landscape, and to somehow build a sort of horizontal field of transmission out from the pavilion across Venice, and sort of insert these cell towers into these four other locations besides the pavilion. In a world that's becoming ever more concerned with nationalism, you'd expect the likes of Catalonia or Scotland to jump at the occasion to make a point about their status and ambitions. The existence of a Catalonian exhibition could be considered a political statement in itself. In actual fact, this show remains very calm and controlled in its scholarly exploration of what makes us love and hate a statue. It's different from exhibitions from other pavilions, because it's a theoretical exhibition, thinking about what is happening with our relationship with works of art, instead of presenting works of art. The examples we are studying in the pavilion are from Catalonia, of course, but they are also put in context. So we are talking about the destruction of an image in Catalonia, but we are talking also about the destruction of Saddam Hussein's statue, because they are similar situations, because most of us, we are thinking in the same way. For nation-building, or nation-bashing, or even for nation-shrugging, there's no place quite like this. After all, the Venice Biennale really is quite unique. And art makes some statements more cryptic, but also easier to say out loud. For Monocle in Venice, I am Chiara Rimella.