Page 29 - La Biennale di Venezia issue of World of Art Magazine

ANTIGUA & BARBUDA
Find Yourself: Carnival and Resistance
JOHN BULL, CARNIVAL, ST. Commissioner: Daryll Matthew, Minister of Sports, Culture, National Festivals and the Arts.
JOHN’S, ANTIGUA, 2018, COLOUR Curator: Barbara Paca with Nina Khrushcheva.
PHOTOGRAPH, 20 X 25 CM.,
COURTESY © THE ESTATE OF TIMOTHY Exhibitors: Timothy Payne, Sir Gerald Price, Joseph Seton, Frank Walter; Intangible Cultural, Heritage Artisans, Mas Troup.
PAYNE 2019, PHOTOGRAPHER, Venue: Centro Culturale Don Orione Artigianelli, Dorsoduro.
ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA.
Situated in a fifteenth-century monastery in the heart of Venice,
Antigua and Barbuda’s National Pavilion celebrates Carnival. For this
island nation, the development of the religious tradition of Carnival
into an act of resistance remains true in modern festivals. With
the pageantry of costumes, parades, resolute songs, and dances,
Carnival has been the manifestation of defiance from its inception as
a slavery and post-abolition phenomenon to the present day. Though
rooted in faith, it accommodates shifting identities, which leads to
introspection. Find Yourself is an exploration of Carnival in Antigua
and Barbuda that expands into diverse locations such as Venice,
New Orleans, Notting Hill, and even Russia. This National Pavilion is
a global study of identity through expression or repression of ritual.
The international migration of symbols of freedom of expression and
treasure highlight the unique history and similarities among people
from many continents. Portraits of Antiguans and Barbudans-a
people of unique beauty and power-line the gallery walls to illustrate
daily life, weddings, funerals, and Carnival. The photographic
exhibition is enlivened by videos of celebrations, rituals, music,
calypsos (protest songs), and dances, with towering mannequins
clad in modern-day Carnival dress as a contemporary personification
of strength. (excerpt)

ARGENTINA

The Name Of A Country
TELA.MARIANA Commissioner: Sergio Alberto Baur Ambasciatore. Curator: Florencia Battiti.
TELLERIA Exhibitor: Mariana Telleria.
Venue: Arsenale

For the first time ever, the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
Worship, through the Directorate of Cultural Affairs, effected a public
and open call of distinct federal nature, receiving 68 proposals of
Argentine artists from different parts of the Country. Composed
of seven monumental sculptures that act up as a punk, Franken-
stein-esque bestiary, this project presents itself as a support for
an intuitive transformation of things; as an archive of desacralized
meanings where religious iconography, rubbish, fashion, spectacle
and nature share the same horizontal hierarchy.“With these
sculptures I am interested in taking off from the form itself of every
object that orbits around these big structures; what I’m trying
to point out is that the only natural thing’s actually the chaotic
coexistence between living and inert objects, between culture and
nature, between order and destruction. Each thing has its own
soul, its formal imprint and its material history. There is tragedy in
everything but in everything there is also life,” says the artist. In
words of the curator, “when Telleria’s artworks set up a network
between things and their imaginary worlds, she’s actually proposing
unforeseen connections between the multiple signifies of our
culture (the sacred, the domestic, the urban, the natural), lightning
up, by friction or by mere contact, new gleams of meaning.”.
(excerpt)
WORLD of ART 29