La Biennale di Venezia has already started and what are you waiting for to make a trip to Italy? Can you imagine being in Venice right now? Trips in gondola, Italian food and the spring weather (the cherry on top!) The perfect setting to visit some of the best art installations of this edition – a multifaceted and sometimes chaotic one – just like its title reminds us “May you live in interesting times”. As Ralph Rugoff, American curator of this 58^th edition and London’s Hayward Gallery’s director, explains that this motto comes from an alleged ancient Chinese proverb, famous in the West since the 1930s: it would be a reference to the “interesting” and difficult times we are living in, the crisis after crisis we must challenge and the surreal and confusing ideas that this 21th century evokes in us. An omen itself. Do you want to know more about BIENNALE VENEZIA 2019: WHAT ARE YOU MISSING RIGHT NOW? Keep reading!

BIENNALE VENEZIA 2019: WHAT ARE YOU MISSING RIGHT NOW

The Biennale started on May 11^th and we have already found the most interesting features between Arsenale and Giardini in which “plurality of voices” – as president Paolo Baratta explained – have found their places. But don’t worry, you have still time until November 24^th to see them!

LIBERTY/LIBERTÀ – USA

What Martin Puryear is trying to do with his installation titled “Swallowed Sun (Monstrance and Volute)” is a recollection of American’s past and present conflicts: the eclipse of values is metaphorically perceived through the covering of the pavilion’s neoclassical façade with a wooden screen; racial and historical issues are been awoken with a tribute in form of shackles stuck in a white column to an African-American slave who worked for Jefferson and bore children for him.

GHANA FREEDOM – GHANA

With the title coming from a song by E.T. Mensah on Ghana reaching independence in 1957, six artists – Felicia Abban, John Akomfrah, El Anatsui, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Ibrahim Mahama, and Selasi Awusi Sosu – put together an exhibition that “explores how that freedom has manifested itself and how it’s evolved in different forms and patterns over time”.

The impressive installation, going from tapestries and films to self-portrait and paintings, has been considered even more remarkable, thanks to architect David Adjaye who designed the interconnected room with curved walls – known in Ghana as “parametric elliptoid” – made with real Ghanian earth, shipping mud directly from Africa to establish a physical and solid connection to their roots.

NEITHER NOR: THE CHALLENGE TO THE LABYRINTH – ITALY

Three Italian artists take part in the Italian pavilion – Enrico David, Chiara Fumai, and Liliana Moro – who took inspirations from the specific labyrinthic setting that Venice displays: this installation wants to exclude a linear route for a more introspective space in which the visitors can really immerse themselves into, getting lost into the exhibition’s world.

Christmas Decorating Ideas 2019 / 2020

CHROMO SAPIENS – ICELAND

A colorful tangle of synthetic hair is the raw material that artist Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir used in her installation: not only visually strong, but the exhibition also offers a multisensory approach, a cavernous journey through space that really makes the visitors reconsider how the use of different materials changes their perspective of space.

MICROWORLD BY LIU WEI – ARSENALE

Enormous aluminum plates take the form of molecules and elementary particles that visitors can observe from a glass partition: the difference between the diverse scales and the sense of dimension is the effect that the artist Liu Wei wants to create in them, along with the feeling of being microscopic creatures against the world.