Venice Architecture Biennale: Drawing, cooking and finding peace

A sketchbook page with sugar packet wrapper and a drawing of houses by a bridge. (Courtesy: Bassant Elshimy)

For the latest entry in our ongoing series following the interns who are working at the National Pavilion of the UAE at the Venice Architecture Biennale, we hear from Basant Elshimy. She is one of a group of 19 Emiratis and long-term residents of the UAE who each spend one month in Venice living, working and acting as custodians and docents of the National Pavilion throughout the duration of the exhibition Lest We Forget: Structures of Memory in the UAE. Each are contributing to The Art Blog with a diary-style entry.

Here Basant writes:

Italy is for drawing. After all, that is all I had ever done there: speak broken Italian, run for the train and draw everything from the lady sleeping on the seat across from me on the bus to the beautiful interior of every church I visited.

Venice is very different from other Italian cities and not just because you have to get around by boat. When I first saw it, Venice looked like an illustration from a storybook or a stage backdrop for a dreamy, whimsical play.

But, to my surprise, this Venetian play wasn’t performed only by Venetians, the stage was packed full of tourists. Tourists that constantly crowded the way with their suitcases or stopped mid-street to listen to their tour-guides, to glimpse at a building, to snap a photo never to be looked at again, and then, be on their way.

I was distraught, I couldn’t find the calm of a small Italian town and I wasn’t drawing. The tourists, in their quickly moving numbers, were unintentionally robbing me of my long-awaited Italian experience.

In my confusion, I decided to cook. The thing about cooking is that you can’t do it on your own, food demands to be shared. I needed a recipe, ingredients, and risk-takers willing to try whatever I produced. The first recipe I tried was for Indian dahl and it came from a fellow intern, Sara. At this point, we had been eating Italian food every day for a week so we needed a little something from home. Finding ingredients involved an adventure, as the supermarket around the corner wasn’t going to satisfy my needs for turmeric or coriander. Finally, we talked our fellow Italian intern and supervisor into coming over for dinner and promised that it wouldn’t hurt.

The dinner party was a success; at least no one had to stay in bed with an achy stomach the next day. Cooking made me feel like I belonged in Venice. To me, cooking means that I am not only here to take a look and leave, I’m here to participate in Italian life, buy groceries, talk to shopkeepers and get lost looking for chilli powder. Thus, I decided the next cooking experiment will involve Italian food, maybe gnocchi.

As for my drawing struggles, they seem to have dissolved as I spent more time walking around the city. It turns out Venice does have its quiet nooks and crannies perfect for sitting down and drawing, they just take a little bit of time, and a lot of getting lost, to find.

* Basant Elshimy is an Egyptian architecture student at the American University of Sharjah. In an indecisive search for meaning, she finds comfort in food, art and travel. Follow her adventures in Venice by following @veniceinterns and #veniceinterns on instagram and twitter, as well as her personal accounts, instagram: basant_elshimy & twitter: basantels.