Page 19 - La Biennale di Venezia 2022 issue of World of Art Contemporary Art Magazine

59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams
Photo by: Andrea Avezzù, Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia
For the first time, except perhaps in the postwar
Winding up the exhibition in the outdoor spaces at the period, the Artistic Director was not able to view
Arsenale are major projects by Giulia Cenci, Virginia many of the artworks first-hand, or meet in person
Overton, Solange Pessoa, Wu Tsang, and Marianne with most of the participating artists. During these
Vitale, which guide viewers to the Giardino delle Vergini endless months in front of the screen, I have
along a path that leads through animal beings, organic pondered the question of what role the International
sculptures, industrial ruins, and disorienting landscapes. Art Exhibition should play at this historical juncture,
and the simplest, most sincere answer I could find is
The Milk of Dreams was conceived and organised that the Biennale sums up all the things we have so
in a period of enormous instability and uncertainty, sorely missed in the last two years: the freedom to
since its development coincided with the outbreak meet people from all over the world, the possibility of
and spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. travel, the joy of spending time together, the practice
of difference, translation, incomprehension, and
La Biennale di Venezia was forced to postpone this communion.
edition by one year, an event that had only occurred
during the two World Wars since 1895. So the very The Milk of Dreams is not an exhibition about the
fact that this exhibition can open is somewhat pandemic, but it inevitably registers the upheavals of
extraordinary: its inauguration is not exactly the our era. In times like this, as the history of La Biennale
symbol of a return to normal life, but rather the di Venezia clearly shows, art and artists can help us
outcome of a collective effort that seems almost imagine new modes of coexistence and infinite new
miraculous. possibilities of transformation.

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