The Art Of the Arab World At the 60th Venice Biennale

by Sasha Adams

The Art Of the Arab World At the 60th Venice Biennale

30 Apr 2024

Once every two years in spring, the entire global art community, from curators, critics, gallerists, and museum professionals to emerging, mid-career, and very well-known artists, converges on one of the most famous and picturesque Italian cities: Venice.

Founded in 1895, the Venice Biennale is still one of the major contemporary art showcases, an opening event everyone associated with contemporary art strives to attend. In addition to the main project and national pavilions at Giardini and Arsenale, numerous exhibitions and projects await you at every turn, presented in beautiful palazzos, churches, and museums. The Biennale reflects the latest trends, introduces new names, sets directions for the development of art, and various artistic and exhibition practices.

This year, the curator of the main project was the Brazilian Adriano Pedrosa, the artistic director of the museum in São Paulo. The main idea of the Biennale, as is clear from its title, "Foreigners Everywhere", is to shift the focus and perspective on art from the representatives of the so-called Global South. The lion's share of the project, in addition to numerous indigenous peoples of North and South America, people of colour, and representatives of Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, is occupied by artists from the Arab world. The main exhibition features works by artists from Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Sudan, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Palestine, and many other countries. One of the "Golden Lions" for contribution to art was awarded to Nil Yalter (b. 1938), a Turkish-born artist who was born in Egypt and immigrated to France.

The UAE is represented this year by Abdullah Al Saadi, a pioneer of conceptual art in the UAE, with the project "Sites of Memory, Sites of Amnesia", curated by Tarek Abou El Fetouh. Al Saadi creates paintings and drawings and is known for his lengthy artist's notebooks, as well as categorisations of found objects and inventions of new alphabets. He has already participated in the Venice Biennale and has repeatedly exhibited his works at the Sharjah Biennial. This year, he presented eight new works at the Arsenale. The exhibition provides insight into Abdullah Al Saadi's creative process, which draws inspiration from the practices of ancient Arab poets. Al Saadi begins drawing, painting, or writing when he becomes fully immersed in nature during his travels. This mirrors the experience described by classical Arab poets as they composed their verses.

Photo: Sasha Adams

Various maps and the delicate fixation of the artist's travels' topography are located in the centre of the pavilion in boxes on a peculiar glass platform reminiscent of a winding path. On the walls are works of paper, colour, and black-and-white, depicting the real topography of roads, local places, and objects situated there. In the showcases, visitors can see found objects — stones with the same motif of the path and even images of cars. At the end of the pavilion, one finds a veritable treasure trove. Performers reenact the situation of showing works in the artist's studio and, at the request of visitors, demonstrate what is hidden in chests and boxes: maps, stones, scrolls, and drawings that Al Saadi produced during his journeys and that he numbered, dated, and coded as if creating and preserving a collective memory for the future. His artistic journey is inspired by the landscape and heritage of the UAE, along with his family roots, exploring the interplay between individuals and their surrounding natural and social settings.

The Pavilion of Saudi Arabia presents an impressive multimedia project by Manal AlDowayan, "Shifting Sands: A Battle Song", curated by Jessica Cerasi and Maya El Khalil. Manal AlDowayan is one of the leading multidisciplinary artists in the region, whose works have been presented in international institutions such as the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Centre Pompidou, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Photo: Sasha Adams

Her artistic practice interrogates traditions, collective memories, and the representation of women. The installation consists of large-scale, printed silk, petal-like sculptures similar to the forms of the desert rose, a crystal symbolising fragility, ephemerality, femininity, and resilience. During the preparation of the project, the artist conducted workshops across Saudi Arabia, connecting over 1,000 women. Various images, texts of the participants themselves, and fragments of statements about Saudi women in different media are applied to these abstract structures. The space is filled with singing sands, recorded using a drone and women's voices.

The Pavilion of Lebanon presents a multimedia installation by Lebanese-Dutch visual artist Mounira Al Solh, "A Dance with Her Myth", curated by Nada Ghandour. The work consists of 41 elements — paintings, drawings, sculptures, embroidery, and video, based on the famous myth of the abduction of Europa by Zeus. The artist turns to the traditions and cultural heritage of Lebanon, dating back to ancient Phoenicia. Through expressive, bright painting and sculpture, she attempts to reconstruct the plot of this ancient myth from the present historical moment and look at it through the eyes of the abducted Phoenician princess, who becomes a symbol of female resilience and agency. At the centre of the installation is an unfinished boat, as an allegory of an unfinished conversation, an unfinished journey towards equality and a real balance between genders.

Photo: Sasha Adams

One of the sensations of the Biennale is the Egyptian Pavilion, located in the farthest part of the Giardini. During the opening, there was a huge line of people eager to see the new video work and installation by the famous artist Wael Shawky from Alexandria. Shawky gained international recognition thanks to his video works, where the tragic story of the Crusades is played out in the form of a puppet theatre, shown from the perspective of a person from the Middle East. In his videos, sculptures, performances, and installations, the artist touches on acute and painful issues such as national, religious, and artistic identity, different views on past events, where good and evil can change places, and some kind of bookish "truth" is questioned. Wael Shawky juxtaposes historical traditions and modernity in a single synthetic work of art.

Photo: Sasha Adams

In the work "Drama 1882", he continues this practice but creates a real opera in eight parts, where puppets are replaced by real actors. The basis is again taken from the turning historical plot about Egypt’s nationalist Urabi revolution against imperial rule (1879–1882), which ended up with the full-scale bombardment of Alexandria by British forces. The action takes place on the historical stage of the old theatre in Alexandria, against the backdrop of scenery depicting characteristic landscapes of Egypt.

"Drama 1882" by Wael Shawky. Source: lissongallery.com

The hall itself is a total installation — it presents both fantastic hybrid objects, at the intersection of design, masterfully crafted applied art, and artefacts. Another work by Wael Shawky "I am Hymns of the New Temple" (2023) is presented at his solo exhibition at Palazzo Grimani as part of the parallel program.

One of the best projects at the Biennale is the exhibition "Your Ghosts Are Mine" at Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti, curated by Matthieu Orlean and produced by Qatar Museums. The project represents the diversity of video art from all corners of the Arab world, both famous and lesser-known artists. Here, the landscape, whether it be the desert, ruins, fire, or the harsh images of the urban environment, is an important part of the artistic language that makes the voices of artists so piercing and uncompromising.

by Sasha Adams