First Look at the Architectural Installations of the 2022 Venice Art Biennale
The 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia has officially opened its doors to the public on April 23, 2022. Entitled “The Milk of Dreams”, the exhibition welcomes more than 210 artists from 58 countries, including a thousand works of art and installations that promote art, science, research and ecological transition of the environmental humanities.
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This year’s exhibition is curated by Cecilia Alemani and organized by the Biennale di Venezia chaired by Roberto Cicutto. The theme is based on a book of the same name by Leonora Carrington, which describes a magical world in which life is constantly reconsidered through the prism of the imagination. 80 National Participations will show their work in the Central Pavilion, the Giardini and the Arsenale, including 5 first participations: the Republic of Cameroon, the Sultanate of Oman, Namibia, Nepal and Uganda.
Read on to get a first-hand look at architectural interventions and national pavilions taking place at the 2022 Venice Art Biennale.
Hanji House Pavilion / Stefano Boeri Architetti
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The Hanji House Pavilion, designed by Stefano Boeri Architetti, is a site-specific project created in dialogue with the Chun Kwang Young: Times Reimagined exhibition, featuring 40 large-scale reliefs, sculptures and installations of mulberry paper, created by Korean artist Chun Kwang Young, in the Palazzo Contarini Polignac, in Venice. Installed in the gardens of the Palazzo, the Hanji House is a wooden rendition of “paper tree architecture”, inspired by the playful practice of “Hanji”, the name given to a traditional Korean papermaking technique derived from mulberry and paper folding based on simple geometric modularity. The structure is made of a combination of four pyramids on top of a parallelepiped, creating a rhombus in the middle. In the pavilion, a real-time interactive art installation by media artist Calvin J. Lee transforms triangular gut packages in virtual form.
Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol / Chilean Pavilion
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The Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol Pavilion is a collective project led by curator Camila Marambio that explores the conservation and visibility of peat bogs, an overlooked type of wetland considered to be the most efficient natural ecosystem for collecting carbon in the atmosphere. It tells the story of how these important ecosystems around the world hold a fundamental place in indigenous cultures, especially in the context of climate change. Presented by the Ministry of Cultures, Art and Heritage and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Chile, the installation is the work of a multidisciplinary team of sound artist Ariel Bustamante; art historian Carla Macchiavello, filmmaker Dominga Sotomayor, and architect Alfredo Thiermann, to name a few, along with the Wildlife Conservation Society-Chile, Tierra del Fuego’s Karukinka Park, and the Selk’nam Hach Saye Cultural Foundation.
Dixit Algorizmi – The Garden of Knowledge / Uzbekistan Pavilion
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The Art and Culture Development Foundation (ACDF) of the Republic of Uzbekistan debuts at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, presenting Dixit Algorizmi – The Garden of Knowledge. Curated by Space Caviar and Sheida Ghomashchi, the pavilion presents a reflection on the pioneering work of Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, a scientist and scholar responsible for introducing Hindu-Arabic numerals to Europe. Al-Khwārizmī’s main research took place at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, which was considered a place of gathering and exchange centered around formal gardens planned in the Islamic tradition. The pavilion will reference this Islamic tradition of the garden as a place of encounter and exchange, questioning the myths and stories of modern technologies, “using the lens of contemporary artistic practices to explore their forgotten roots and resonances with distant places, times, and cultures”.
The pavilion has polished aluminum floors, reflective surfaces and symmetries that are reminiscent of the geometrically planned gardens – especially the reflective water pools at the heart of traditional Islamic gardens. The space also features a botanical arrangement of dried sea lavender hanging like clouds, a flower both native to Uzbekistan and the color purple, prominent in Uzbek architecture. In parallel to the public program in the pavilion, Velocity0, a sound installation by Uzbek musician Abror Zufarov and artist and composer Charli Tapp will serve as a hub for international composers, inviting them to experiment with Velocity0’s algorithm, through a dematerialized platform called The Programma. .