One of the most anticipated art events of the year, the 58th Venice Biennale, entitled May You Live In Interesting Times, is taking place from May 11 to November 24, curated by Ralph Rugoff, currently the director of the Hayward Gallery in London and organized by La Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta. The title alludes to periods of crisis, uncertainty and turmoil, however the event does not have a theme per se. Rather, it is highlighting a general approach to making art and a view of art’s social function as embracing both pleasure and critical thinking.
In addition to the main exhibition, a vast number of national pavilions, and plenty of coinciding exhibitions, the Biennale is also presenting a range of collateral events, 21 in total. These collateral events offer greater curatorial fluidity and are promoted by non-profit national and international bodies and institutions, providing a wide range of contributions enriching the diversity of voices that characterizes the Biennale.
Taipei Fine Arts Museum of Taiwan is presenting artist Shu Lea Cheang’s new project 3x3x6 curated by Paul B. Preciado. Cheang has created a new work inspired by the history of the exhibition venue, Palazzo delle Prigioni, which first served as a prison in the 16th century. The work’s title refers to today’s standardized architecture of industrial imprisonment: a 3×3 square-metre cell constantly monitored by six cameras. 3x3x6 thus speaks to the realities of prison, constructed both physically and by the presence of digital surveillance mechanisms.
The exhibition works with ten historical and contemporary case studies of individuals who have been outcast or incarcerated due to reasons of gender variance, sexual preference, or racial differences.
“My mix media installation 3x3x6 takes the past of Palazzo delle Prigioni prison and its history of incarcerating Giacomo Casanova in 1755, as a starting point to further the concept of anti-colonial imaginations to hack the operating system of the history of sexual subjection,” the artist explains to CLOSER. “Each case is presented as reimagined trans punk fiction in a 10-minute film episode.”
The exhibition concept examines how visual and legal hegemonies are constructed over time and how these hegemonies rationalize sex, gender, and race as a result. Through its presentation, 3x3x6 further explores the alternative forms of nonphysical, yet increasingly omnipresent imprisonment in this new digital age, where surveillance apparatus and technologies are becoming inescapable.
On being the first woman to represent Taiwan in a solo-exhibition, Cheang comments: “I would prefer to be called the first man to represent Taiwan. Or maybe one day, we will see headlines as such, the first trans, the first queer to represent Taiwan in a solo exhibition?”
Artist and filmmaker, Cheang works with various art mediums and film formats, including installation, performance, net art, public art, video installations, feature-length films, and mobile web series. Her work seeks to cross the boundaries of society, geography, politics, and economic structures, thus redefining genders, roles and mechanisms.
Representing Hong Kong at the Venice Biennale Collateral Events is Los Angeles–based Hong Kong artist and educator Shirley Tse, presenting Stakeholders, co-presented and co-promoted by M+, at the West Kowloon Cultural District, and the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC).
The exhibition is curated by Christina Li, an internationally active curator based in Hong Kong and Amsterdam, as Guest Curator, with Doryun Chong, Deputy Director, Curatorial, and Chief Curator, M+, acting as Consulting Curator.
Over the past two decades, Tse has addressed the various meanings and possible interpretations of materials and things. Her sculptural practice has evolved from considering plastics as the prime signifier of globalisation through circulation, standardisation, and industrialization, to examining plastic as an adjective, and the resonance of plasticity, movement, and multiplicity in contemporary society.
The exhibition in Venice presents a new body of site-responsive work by Tse that contemplates a model for how we relate to each other, in ways that counter the logic that has produced our tumultuous times. In line with the overarching theme of this edition of the Biennale, Tse uses the medium of sculpture to translate her thought process into physical form with two large-scale works: Negotiated Differences and Playcourt.
Her work explores both horizontality and verticality, highlighting the unique spatial qualities of the exhibition site on the Campo della Tana, which includes an interior and an open courtyard. Negotiated Differences is a sprawling, rhizome-like installation of 3D-printed joints and hand-turned wooden forms that stretches across all the rooms of the space. Balusters, handrails, bowling pins, and abstract objects are connected by wooden, metal, and plastic elements, bringing together craft, mechanical, and digital technologies into an integrated whole.
“I choose materials very specifically for their philosophical, cultural and semiotic reasons. In recent years I have been using a combination of materials to explore the concept of ‘plasticity’ and the ‘synthetic’”, Tse explains to CLOSER.
On her use of plastic in the current times of environmental consciousness, the artist notes: “I believe the true culprit to pollution is our mode of consumption – single use, disposability, our culture of convenience. This kind of usage is clearly not sustainable, natural or synthetic. The study of ecosystems is a practice of multi-dimensional thinking, which is the guiding principle of my sculptural practice.”
Playcourt comprises sculptural amalgams of equipment and anthropomorphic forms that draw the eye skyward. The installation transforms the enclosure into an improvised badminton court, partly inspired by the artist’s memories of growing up in Hong Kong, and emphasises the negotiation between people and space that is a fundamental component of play. This negotiation is at the heart of Stakeholders; foregrounding the ideas of affect, empathy, and ethics, the exhibition proposes a space to reflect on how we can come to terms with the unforeseen actions that define our relationships with one another.
“In my formative years, I was convinced that art was the practice that would combat conformity and social conditioning – something I experienced as oppressive in Hong Kong. It has a unique cultural and political identity – postcolonial and now in transition between different ideologies that reflects the concept of fluidity that I often consider within my work.”
And what does the artist find most interesting about the times we currently live in?
“Now is the time we need to reaffirm our agency more than ever before. My work explores the concept of heterogeneity. I believe that the interdependency of individual entities starts with the realization that they have a stake in something,” Tse observes.
