This week, I'm at the Venice Biennale, which begins its preview days tomorrow after one of the most turbulent build-ups in the exhibition’s recent history.
The 61st event, titled In Minor Keys, arrives after its traditional awards were scrapped, its international jury resigned and several national presentations were affected by political disputes, legal battles and withdrawals.
The controversy around the awards began in April, when the five-member international jury said it would not consider national pavilions from countries whose leaders face charges at the International Criminal Court. The decision would have affected Russia and Israel.
The jury later resigned and organisers replaced the Golden Lion awards with two prizes to be presented after a public vote. Winners will be announced on November 22, the closing day of the exhibition.
That sequence has changed the tenor of the opening week. Instead of the usual speculation over which pavilion might win the Golden Lion, the conversation has shifted to the purpose and limits of national representation at a global art event.
Iran pulled out days before the event opened, with organisers giving no reason. South Africa is absent, after a legal dispute over a Gaza-focused work by Gabrielle Goliath. Israel’s participation, two years after its pavilion was closed to the public in protest over the Gaza war, has also drawn criticism from artists and activists.
That criticism has continued into preview week. About 60 artists and other biennale participants gathered today to protest against Israel’s participation, adding to earlier calls for the pavilion to be excluded.
The biennale has always been more than a gathering of exhibitions. Across the Giardini, the Arsenale and venues throughout Venice, countries use it to present artists, ideas and cultural identities to an international audience.
For Bana Kattan, curator of the National Pavilion UAE, the turbulence around the event is inseparable from the moment in which it is taking place. “This is a reflection of the world we live in today,” she tells The National.
Kattan’s exhibition, Washwasha, offers one of the quieter responses to that atmosphere. Taking its title from the Arabic onomatopoeic word for whispering, the UAE pavilion brings together Mays Albaik, Jawad Al Malhi, Farah Al Qasimi, Alaa Edris, Lamya Gargash and Taus Makhacheva in an exhibition about sound, memory, movement and the changing rhythms of life in the Emirates.
That focus is rooted in the UAE’s social fabric: a country shaped by movement, migration, many languages and communities living alongside one another. In Washwasha, listening becomes a way of understanding a place continually remade by those who pass through it, settle in it and call it home.
And for artists from the region and around the world, Venice remains a singular platform.
“This is still the strongest exhibition in the world, both historically and in the present,” says Italian artist Ugne Gelgotaite Marini, who is exhibiting as an emerging artist. “There is a bureaucracy behind it and that is part of the shadow it carries from the past. But it is also one of the only exhibitions that is not oriented towards sales.”
The biennale continues to carry a symbolic force that few other platforms can match. “I would not imagine having a career as an artist without exhibiting here,” she says. “For an artist, exhibiting in Venice is one of the highest things you can do. It is the strongest brand in the art world.”
Laila Binbrek, director of the National Pavilion UAE, believes each Venice presentation adds another layer to the country’s cultural story. “Every year gives us an opportunity to continue building on the stories we are telling about the UAE and to show the diversity of practice and voices here,” she tells The National. “This year, with Washwasha, there is also this element of sound and listening, which feels especially needed at this moment.”
The point, she says, is not only to place the UAE in front of an international audience, but to connect its artists to the wider conversations taking place across the biennale.
“To be in Venice and to be part of this larger dialogue is important for us as a nation, but also for our artists and our community,” Binbrek says. “It places them in conversation with artists who are working through similar practices and questions, and it also keeps us open to listening to what others are saying.”
That emphasis on listening and cultural memory also appears across several Arab presentations this year.
Egypt’s pavilion, Silence Pavilion: Between the Intangible and the Tangible, by Armen Agop, is framed around stillness, listening and material presence. Palestine’s official collateral event, Gaza – No Words – See the Exhibit, brings together 100 works of tatreez created by Palestinian women in refugee camps and villages in Lebanon, Jordan and the occupied West Bank. Syria’s Sara Shamma presents a multisensory installation inspired by the funerary towers of Palmyra. Qatar’s presentation draws on gathering spaces, performance, film, sculpture and food.
The projects are very different. But together, they show another side of a biennale otherwise dominated by arguments over countries, prizes and legitimacy. Through sound, silence, embroidery, ruins, gathering and memory, they ask visitors to spend time with histories and experiences beyond their own.
That remains the promise of Venice, even in a year as fraught as this one. Countries arrive here carrying conflicts that cannot be settled in an exhibition hall. But art can create the conditions for dialogue – bringing people from different places into contact with one another’s stories, and leaving open the possibility for greater understanding.
Ancient Gaza artefacts meet contemporary Palestinian stories
An exhibition in Turin, Italy, is bringing ancient artefacts from Palestine into dialogue with contemporary works by Levantine artists, to draw attention to the need to protect Palestinian history and heritage.
Titled Gaza, The Future Has an Ancient Heart, the show at Fondazione Merz has been assembled by a team from the Merz Foundation, the Egizio archaeology museum and the MAH – Museum of Art and History Geneva.
“With what has been happening in Gaza over the last two years, we felt we had to do something, and as an arts museum, we can do our job,” co-curator and Fondazione Merz founder Beatrice Merz tells The National.
Find more here.
Ashley's internal struggle while filming The Devil Wears Prada 2
If you find yourself impressed by Simone Ashley in The Devil Wears Prada 2, you’re in good company. Meryl Streep got there first.
“Simone Ashley doesn’t try at all,” Streep says. “She owns the screen.”
“Yeah, she’s subtly perfect,” Anne Hathaway says. “Simone Ashley’s a sleek racehorse. She’s a thoroughbred. She glides.”
Emily Blunt goes a bit further: “We’ve been usurped by Simone Ashley."
The British actress, who became a global name through Netflix shows Sex Education and Bridgerton, now sits in the top assistant seat filled by Blunt and Hathaway in the first film. She walked on to the set of the long-awaited sequel, looking as if she belonged there, but inside, she says, she was finding her footing.
“I didn't feel like that at all,” Ashley tells The National. “That’s so nice that they said that. I think I came in confident, but I didn’t feel like I owned the place. I was just trying to learn as much as possible.”
Find more here.
Dates for your diary
Swedish House Mafia at Ushuaia Dubai Harbour Experience Dubai – May 16
Celinedee Matahari at The Fridge Warehouse, Dubai – May 19
Adam at Dubai Opera – May 28
Other highlights
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