From June to November this year, art smart travelers through Europe eschewed thoughts of gondola rides and photo ops at the Rialto and St. Mark’s as they made their way out of Venice’s Stazione Sta. Lucia. They headed straight to the biglietteria and purchased tickets to take a vaporetto to the Giardino and Arsanale to witness the oldest and arguably the world’s most important contemporary art festival.
No self-respecting modern art museum curator can ever do without making a biannual pilgrimage to Venice, the gem of the Adriatic where stylistic movements are defined, creative influences mapped out and artistic reputations made against the heady backdrop of the new, here and now. It is here, admittedly, where the world’s greatest international art pageant (held since 1895) takes place, where national pavilions displaying a country’s definition of the cutting edge – the supreme manifestation of the creative energies of its citizenry – are trotted out in an unabashed attempt to outdo everybody else.
Presence here is absolutely key. Simply put, a country’s art blips on the radars of museum directors, curators, critics, scholars and yes, dealers when it finds its way here. Ordinary folk and those with parochial purviews and lowly aspirations would perhaps disagree with the assumption that making it here means everything – that having a pavilion at the festival is commensurate to having graduated into the big league; but look at how nations with aspirations of being taken seriously in the international art circuit find ways and means to take part in the Biennial. Our neighbors China, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand and even Indonesia are all accounted for. So – quite unsurprisingly – guess who’s not here… again?
Yes, contemporary Philippine art, formidable as it is, just lost another opportunity to strut its stuff, and shore up national pride on the world stage. (The presence of Kidlat Tahimik’s decades old film The Perfumed Nightmare in the Arsenale – having being selected as part of the group show "Always A Little Further" by the curator Rosa Martinez – doesn’t figure in this argument for the simple reason that it does not constitute how we choose to present ourselves. Not that it made a tremendous impact to begin with, as one Spanish curator intimated to me in a recent e-mail).
Luck of funds for our contin-ued no-show on our terms? More like a lack of foresight and ambition. Really now, what does it take to build a pavilion, or even rent a Venetian palazzo for a few months pro patria? A few million dollars? Geesh, that’s chicken feed when here we have the powers-that-be twittering about a white elephant airport or wasting God knows how much for shoddy infrastructure projects! To have to go on and on again about priorities knowing full well that art is the last saving grace of these islands and the only engine that will power this nation’s growth is just so terribly dispiriting.
In any case, my wife and I contented ourselves with wallowing in amazement and finding joy in what the rest of the world had to offer. We particularly liked the dazzling video beacon that the Biennale organizers set up at the Giardino entrance, and the rambunctiously playful clambering bronze sculptures of laughing, suited men by international festival favorite Juan Muñoz. Other favorites: Great Britain, with its raucously brilliant Gilbert & George friezes which transformed their pavilion into a cathedral worshipping sub-cultures; the Republic of Korea for its technology driven reflections on urbanity; and most especially Canada, represented by the video artist Rebecca Belmore whose images of figures rising out like tongues of fire out of water, projected from behind a waterfall, proved to be truly mesmeric.
Video was clearly the medium of choice in this Biennial. The Italian Pavilion, which hosted a group exhibition, "The Experience of Art" curated by Maria de Corral sought to delineate the last few decades of art making through the oeuvres of 42 international artists including the late British painter Francis Bacon, the Americans Barbara Kruger and Philip Guston, and the Dutch/South African Marlene Dumas. But their works somehow paled in terms of impact having been set against Taiwan’s Chen Chieh-jen who showed a haunting film of two old women revisiting a factory they used to toil in, and Francesco Vezzoli’s outlandishly decadent faux trailer for a non-existent remake of Gore Vidal’s Caligula, which showed scenes not even the most adventurous X-rated film director would dare imagine. It featured, among others, thespic luminaries Milla Jovovich and Helen Mirren, and the director Quentin Tarantino, all of who were decked out to the orgiastic hilt by the inimitable Donatella Versace. It made for truly incredible social commentary – indeed, a delicious comeuppance of Hollywood excess!
A parting shot: I am very pleased that we were able to get a pavilion up for the recently concluded World Expo in Aichi, Japan. But let us also remember that the people who attend such things aren’t the same sorts that descend upon the Venice Biennale – the world’s culture intelligentsia whose opinions matter, and whose decisions really make an impact.
In two years time, let us please try a more focused approach to our cultural diplomacy and consider taking the high road.