Page 38 - La Biennale di Venezia issue of World of Art Magazine

LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA
58TH INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION

ESTONIA
Birth V
4LIFE EXHIBITION VIEW Commissioner: Maria Arusoo, Centre of Contemporary Arts of Estonia. Curators: Andrew Berardini,
AT GOLDSMITHS CCA, Irene Campolmi, Sarah Lucas, Tamara Luuk.
LONDON. PHOTO BY Exhibitor: Kris Lemsalu.
MARK BLOWER
Venue: c/o Legno & Legno, Giudecca 211

Our wet myths and sticky fairytales were never just stories. And in
the work of Kris Lemsalu, fantasy tentacles into reality until art and
life majestically snarl into a singularly glorious mess. And not just
dreams and fictions tangle in her work but also the lives of others:
friends and musicians, writers and curators, workers and strangers
and all together, catalyzed by the artist, we make something more
meaningful than anyone could alone.
For the Estonian Pavilion, Lemsalu gathers all these sculptural
phantasms and disparate collaborators into an installation that
gives birth to a world of shamanic force, visionary weirdness, and
collective revival. While Lemsalu in earlier works engaged with the
topic of death, for this exhibition, “Birth V”, she’s more concerned
with life - although death wears a carnival mask in Venice anyway.
A punk pagan trickster feminist sci-fi shaman, Kris Lemsalu gathers
together both collected and crafted objects into totemic sculptures
and hallucinatory environments, animated with performances by
the artist and her coterie of collaborators. Wrought with humor
and pathos, entrancing and repulsive, her work is a shuddering
laugh squeezed with bravery from vulnerability, broken but jubilant,
mournful without forgetting its heart in solemnity.(excerpt)

FINL AND

A Greater Miracle of Perception
OUTI PIESKI AND EEVA-KRISTIINA Commissioner: Raija Koli, Director Frame Contemporary Art Finland.
HARLIN, RESEARCH PHOTO FROM THE Curators: Giovanna Esposito Yussif, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Christopher Wessels.
PROJECT MÁTTARÁHKU LÁDJOGAHPIR Exhibitors: Miracle Workers Collective: Maryan Abdulkarim, Khadar Ahmed, Hassan Blasim, Giovanna Esposito Yussif, Sonya
– FOREMOTHER´S HORN HAT, 2018- Lindfors, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Outi Pieski, Leena Pukki, Lorenzo Sandoval, Martta Tuomaala, Christopher L.
2019. COURTESY OF OUTI PIESKI.
Thomas, Christopher Wessels, Suvi West.
Venue: Giardini
Exploring the miracle as a poetic vehicle from which to expand
perceptions and experiences, the exhibition is realised through
cinematic collaborations by members of the collective, and a
site-specific sculptural installation by Outi Pieski gesturing to
the transnationality of the Sámi people across Norway, Sweden,
Finland, and Russia. Creating a space of encounters upon which
to pause and reflect, the pavilion challenges the notion of
national representation and belonging.
“We are shifting beyond the realm of the possible, exploring
moments regarded as ‘failures’ and exploring technologies of
listening and seeing to chart the journey of the impossible,”
says the collective, “while deliberating the importance of
processuality in collective practices.”
“For us, this is an exciting journey”, says Raija Koli, Director of
Frame and commissioner of the exhibition. “By bringing together
the multidisciplinary practices and diverse backgrounds of its
members, the Miracle Workers are rearticulating the idea of a
contemporary art exhibition at the Finnish Pavilion. The collective
is also exploring the parameters of the biennial concept by
taking the Biennale out of Venice and all the way to Karasjok into
the circumpolar North.”(excerpt)

38 WORLD of ART