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ARTEXT : La Biennale di Venezia
" WELFARE - FARE WELL "
All the invited artists in this year’s exhibition draw upon ordinary life and their daily surroundings. When asking if René Block had a special concept in mind when planning the exhibition, he replies: "Actually, I didn’t start by designing an artistic concept, but concentrated much more on the space. The extraordinary Nordic Pavilion is probably the most beautiful, but also the most difficult space to gather artists’ works." Inside the Nordic Pavilion, there are the two Swedish artists, Jacob Dahlgren who is born in Sweden and Sirous Namazi of Iranian origin. Outside, on the outer walls on both sides of the building are the two contributions by artists of Norwegian origin, Goksøyr & Martens and Lars Ramberg. And framing the pavilion, almost like satellites, the two artists from Finland: in the depot of the pavilion Iraqi born Adel Abidin and in the Aalto Pavilion Maaria Wirkkala of Finnish origin.
The Nordic Pavilion has a focus on the performative character of the exhibits. This becomes very clear in It would be nice to do something political by Toril Goksøyr and Camilla Martens, where a "Black", thus an underprivileged person, is doing the never-ending cleaning of the glass window of the pavilion throughout the whole time period of the biennial. Jacob Dahlgren invites in his work I, the world, things, life the audience to use his dart boards and by throwing the darts to constantly change his work, while Adel Abidin’s travel agency ABIDIN TRAVELS – Welcome to Baghdad has specialized in vacation trips to Baghdad. In another way, Liberté, the work of Lars Ramberg that has been temporarily transferred to Giardini, is also performative: at the home grounds in the courtyard of the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo the work has double function as a piece of art and public toilets. Also Container and Untitled, the sculptural installations of an unfolded garbage container or window and door structures by Sirous Namazi, can be characterized as performative works. All these works are at the same time traps into which the audience is allowed "to walk into". Maaria Wirkkala’s poetic installation is an important contrast
in the collective appearance of the Nordic representation. The Aalto
Pavilion, after a long time again becomes a room with an almost sacral
charisma through her subtle and meditative work Landing Prohibited – Vietato
Lo Sbarco. The seven artists contributing to the Nordic Pavilion are Adel Abidin (b. 1973) from Finland, Jacob Dahlgren (b. 1970) from Sweden, Toril Goksøyr (b. 1970) & Camilla Martens (b. 1969) from Norway, Sirous Namazi (b. 1970) from Sweden, Lars Ramberg (b. 1964) from Norway, and Maaria Wirkkala (b. 1954) from Finland.
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Artext © 2007 |