What is the Venice Biennale and why should we care?

remember that time your friend said oh I'm just so tired the venice biennale was exhausting and your uncle was like what's a be taller and you stopped speaking to both of them forever I'm professor Li is not really a professor and this is art 101 not really a class and I'm here to clear up this Venice being all their business right now what is this word and what does it mean and how do you pronounce it and why is it such a big deal the word be in LA itself is pretty simple it's Italian and it just means every other year why does your friend say it in such an irritating way think of what con or Sundance are for film for what the Olympics is for sports that's pretty much what the venice biennale means for art as in it's too expensive for most of us to ever get there it's fun for a lot of celebrities to wander around and most of the art will never make it to your town but the venice biennale is part of a tradition like the olympics Arcon of country is showing off their best in this case their best art the venice biennale goes back to 1895 that first one broke off into separate festivals for theater cinema music and later on architecture and dance but the venice biennale of art still rules them all here's how the whole thing works in a park in the city called the giardini most participating countries have their own pavilion Canada's looks sort of like a cabin in the woods each country chooses an artist or artist to represent it and that artist gets to use their country's pavilion in the way that best suits their work in 2017 artist Jeffrey farmer took advantage of the fact that the Canadian Pavilion was about to be restored and made his installation look like it was spilling out through the missing walls and roof he was casting light on the idea that Canada's Pavilion at the Biennale is not a permanent thing and that it was built with world war ii reparation money paying respect to the lost lives of men and women so what does this have to do with your everyday life who a country picks to represent them in an art fair this huge says something about what the country is thinking about or what image they're trying to project to the world in 2005 performance artist Rebecca Bellmore represented Canada at the bee in LA and the video she made called fountain offered the perspective of an indigenous woman and pointed to the importance in Canada of water and accountability in 2017 the group show at the Chinese pavilion focused on the idea that contemporary artists in China are looking back to old traditions and carrying them into the future at the 2019 Venice Biennale artists collective Asuma will be representing Canada it'll be the first time the Nu II artists are our pick for the Biennale and they'll add an important vision of our North to this huge International Art Fair the Biennale is also a bit of a miniature model of the world outside the arts the biggest national pavilions at the Biennale echo the current structure of which countries hold power in the world gender is still an issue at the Biennale as it is in the rest of the world male artists are still the majority as of the 56 Biennale in 2015 had 54 percent still better than 69 percent at the 55th Biennale there are other shows like the Venice Biennale around the world Documenta the fair that happens in Kassel Germany every five years or Art Basel the fair in Switzerland or art Miami there are more biennials triennial and even Quinn Quinn eels than you can shake a stick at and they're a good thing for artists who can use them to get noticed and become part of the art market and get pretty rich so sure the Venice Biennale is a bit inside baseball but it's an important part of our artistic culture even though it's far away it's still a place where every two years countries including Canada has something to say about what they value and art plays a leading role in representing culture so obviously you and your uncle should go and you can watch him call it the bean Yeller at all the parties there are a lot of parties and pass out drunken ear canal see you next time for more art 101 you [Music]

Channel: CBC Arts

Views: 9,471

Rating: 4.8235292 out of 5

Keywords: Canadian Art, CBC Arts, CBC, Canada, Art, Music, Culture

Id: IfRADh0uiwo

Length: 4min 2sec (242 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 09 2019

Reddit Comments

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[u/Abideguide]

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