Page 12 - La Biennale di Venezia 2022 issue of World of Art Contemporary Art Magazine

Biennale Arte 2022 LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA
59TH INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION

STATEMENT BY
CECILIA ALEMANI CURATOR OF
59TH INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION
THE MILK OF DREAMS

TITLE AND THEMES
The Milk of Dreams takes its title from a book by Leonora Carrington
(1917–2011) in which the Surrealist artist describes a magical world where
CECILIA ALEMANI. PHOTO BY ANDREA AVEZZÙ.
COURTESY LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA life is constantly re-envisioned through the prism of the imagination. It is
a world where everyone can change, be transformed, become something
or someone else; a world set free, brimming with possibilities. But it is
also the allegory of a century that imposed intolerable pressure on the
very definition of the self, forcing Carrington into a life of exile: locked up
in mental hospitals, an eternal object of fascination and desire, yet also
Cecilia Alemani is an Italian curator a figure of startling power and mystery, always fleeing the strictures of a
based in New York. Since 2011, she fixed, coherent identity. When asked about her birth, Carrington would say
has been the Director & Chief Curator she was the product of her mother’s encounter with a machine, suggesting
of High Line Art, the program of public the same bizarre union of human, animal, and mechanical that marks much
art of the renowned urban park built of her work. The exhibition The Milk of Dreams takes Leonora Carrington’s
on an elevated railroad in New York. otherworldly creatures, along with other figures of transformation, as
In addition to commissioning and companions on an imaginary journey through the metamorphoses of
producing ambitious projects with bodies and definitions of the human.
some of today's most influential
artists such as El Anatsui, John This exhibition is grounded in many conversations with artists held in the
Baldessari, Phyllida Barlow, Carol last few years. The questions that kept emerging from these dialogues
Bove, Sheila Hicks, Rashid Johnson, seem to capture this moment in history when the very survival of the
Barbara Kruger, Ibrahim Mahama, species is threatened, but also to sum up many other inquiries that
Faith Ringgold, Ed Ruscha, Nari Ward pervade the sciences, arts, and myths of our time. How is the definition of
and Adrián Villar Rojas, she also the human changing? What constitutes life, and what differentiates plant
launched the High Line Plinth, a and animal, human and non-human? What are our responsibilities towards
new program of monumental works the planet, other people, and other life forms? And what would life look
inaugurated in June 2019 with Brick like without us?
House, a sculpture by the artist
Simone Leigh and followed by Untitled These are some of the guiding questions for this edition of the
(drone) by Sam Durant. In 2017, Biennale Arte, which focuses on three thematic areas in particular: the
Alemani curated the Italian Pavilion representation of bodies and their metamorphoses; the relationship
at 57th International Art Exhibition of between individuals and technologies; the connection between bodies and
La Biennale di Venezia. Titled Il Mondo the Earth.
Magico (The Magical World), the
exhibition featured new large-scale, Many contemporary artists are imagining a posthuman condition that
site-specific commissions by Giorgio challenges the modern Western vision of the human being − and especially
Andreotta Calò, Adelita Husni-Bey, and the presumed universal ideal of the white, male “Man of Reason” − as
Roberto Cuoghi. fixed centre of the universe and measure of all things. In its place, artists

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