Visitors look at “The Key in the Hand” a piece of art by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota presented at Japan’s pavilion during the 56th International Art Exhibition (Biennale d’Arte) titled “All the World’s Futures” in Venice. - AFP

 

VENICE — A Nigerian art critic and museum director is the first African to curate the Biennale contemporary art fair that opened Saturday for its seven-month run, while female artists are representing more countries than ever in national pavilions — trends seen as an informal rebalancing in the art world.



There's Joan Jonas for the United States, Fiona Hall for Australia, Irina Nakhova for Russia, Sarah Lucas for Great Britain, Chiharu Shiota for Japan, Pamela Rosenkranz for Switzerland and Camille Norment for Norway.



And those women are all from the more established Biennale participants in the Giardini, around one-third of the 89 national pavilions.



The prominence of women in the national pavilions — which along with the main show curated by Okwui Enwezor comprise the 56th International Art Exhibition — may be coincidence.



Still, the force of the female numbers is gaining notice as somehow tapping into a zeitgeist and challenging the notion of the art world as being male dominated.



"I think it is wonderful so many women are representing countries this year. I think it is great," Jonas said, sitting outside the US pavilion — where she had just been approached by a woman who thanked her for giving hope to female artists.



Jonas started her artistic career as a sculptor in the 1960s before moving into performance art and becoming an early adapter to video in the 1970s.



She said that her participation in the Biennale would bring "a lot more attention to my work" — while adding that she always felt supported.



Her show, titled "They Come to Us Without a Word," comprises four galleries with thematic compositions of video installations, prints and objects that explore natural phenomena taking inspiration from passages by Icelandic writer Halldor Laxness.



The pavilion's central rotunda provides the theater for a fifth gallery, a study of light and reflection featuring Murano-made mirrors and a crystal chandelier.



At the nearby Australian pavilion, Hall's show is its own natural history museum — a comment on colonialism and capitalism made through galleries of driftwood taxidermy collected from New Zealand beaches, hanging grass masks with scraps of camouflage, and a collection of rare and extinct animals woven from desert grass and other materials according to Aboriginal tradition.



At the nearby Arsenale, which hosts part of the main group exhibition, Nigerian-born Enwezor does not play up being the first African curator at the Biennale.



His career has focused more on periods, namely art of the 20th and 21st centuries, than geographies. His show, "All the World's Futures," is globally inclusive with artists from 53 nations, with no attempt to represent African art as such.



Enwezor has curated at least five other major international group shows, including documenta in Germany, and founded a journal of contemporary African art.



Since 2011, he has been director of Haus der Kunst in Munich. He said he has spent his 25-year career "working with artists across every cultural context.



I am interested in their ideas and concepts, whether they are Indian, African, European, Asian, whatever. In that sense it is quite unremarkable."



The contemporary art Biennale, held once every two years, runs through Nov. 22 at the Giardini, Arsenale and locations throughout Venice. — AP