Page 35 - La Biennale di Venezia issue of World of Art Magazine

CHINA
From “Re” to”Thinking” Three Acts)
THE CLEANER, STILL Commissioner: China Arts and Entertainment Group Ltd. (CAEG).
PHOTOGRAPH 1, Curator: Wu Hongliang.
COURTESY DANICA
DAKIÅ Exhibitors: Chen Qi, Fei Jun, He Xiangyu, Geng Xue.
Venue: Arsenale

Walking past the game world where history confronting with future,
an open small square sudden-ly jumps into the viewers’ eyes.
Moving to stand on a narrow bridge on the side of the square,
viewers are able to overlook artist Geng Xue’s video art work,
“The Name of Gold”, from the highest point of the exhibition hall.
Displayed on a large screen, 10 meters wide by 4 meters high, an
absolute black-and-white world depicted in the video presents this
female artist’s care for the origins and circles of life. At the ending,
a golden ship floating from the nothingness echoes sev-eral golden
devices on the ground that look like water splashes or umbilical
cords, among which a golden person is floating, decomposing and
disappearing…Water is the subject of this area. Whether you are
on or under the bridge, you can see artist Chen Qi’s work, “The
Born and Expan-sion of 2012”, a large-scale, super-realistic, Chinese
traditional style black-and-white woodblock
print. If you come closer, you may even feel yourself being immersed
in the water waves on the print, with ripples spreading in your body
and mind. (excerpt)

PENITENCIA, 2019 CUBA
(136,6 KG OF PAPER USED
TO MAKE THE WORK A Cautionary Environment
OF ART/ 245 POSTURE
EQUIVALENT TO 7 TREES, Commissioner: Norma Rodríguez Derivet, Consejo Nacional de Artes Plásticas.
30 TO 40 YEARS OLD, Curator: Margarita Sanchez Prieto.
FELLED TO MAKE THE Exhibitors: Alejandro Campins, Alex Hérnandez, Ariamna Contino e Eugenio Tibaldi.
PAPER USED IN THE WORK Venue: Isola di San Servolo
OF ART/ 245 YEARS)

Scientific publications and news bulletins regularly comment upon
the unforeseen scope of human actions, whose effects often do not
correspond with their original purposes. Whether it be to improve
their living conditions or optimize the availability of goods and
materials, human beings have (in)voluntarily caused damage to
ecosystems, but have become aware of the progressive depletion
of the existing resources. This situation has sparked protectionist
policies, as well as alarming actions, including military interventions
in foreign territories, which have resulted in irreparable damage,
exacerbating migration, the Third-Worldization of the First World,
and global inequality. Peripheral regions attract interest, and one can
speculate about the alternatives left to some of them. The march
of progress advances under challenging circumstances: economic
demands have doubled due to the relentless demographic growth,
while major scientific and technological transformations have
worsened nature’s disarray. Nature is our source of life, which now
turns against us displaying all its might. Although those human
actions are as old as human history, it is only in recent years that the
need to reflect on their implications has been addressed. (excerpt)

WORLD of ART 35