Venice by Venezia: An interview with Art Biennale curator Cecilia Alemani

Following the opening of the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice by Venezia spoke with artistic director Cecilia Alemani, who discussed her show, the history of the Biennale, and art's relationship with society.

For uninitiated young people, the Biennale can be a bit intimidating, considering the sprawl of the pavilions and the importance of the exhibition. What would your advice be to someone taking it in for the first time?

First, don't be intimidated. It’s an exhibition; it doesn’t bite.

Think of it as an occasion to learn and to see some of the most cutting-edge contemporary art that has been made in the last two years. Though in particular with this show, there is a more transhistorical focus — so, it is not just a focus on contemporary art, but there is also some art from the 20th century, because I like the idea of creating connections between different generations and different movements.

The Biennale has been doing this job for over 125 years. And very often, it does it in very complex times, as we’re living through now with the pandemic and the war. It’s an institution that has always been there for Venice, even in the darkness times of our humanity.

Since your own first visit, how has the Biennale changed over time, and what did you wish to contribute to its evolution?

The first Biennale I saw was in 1999. It was the first Biennale curated by the very famous Swiss curator Harald Szeemann, and that was very much a turning point for the Biennale. You know, the Biennale has been around for a long time, the first was in 1895, but, up to 1995, it was very much an Italian business — there had never been an international curator. In 1995, which was 100-year anniversary, there was the first non-Italian curator, the French curator Jean Clair, who did an amazing show, and then there was Szeemann in 1999 and 2001. It was completely mind-changing because it was so global; it was the first time that there was a lot of Chinese art in Venice, a lot of African art, so it really opened my mind. I could just take the train from Milan to Venice and go see some of the best art produced in the world. This was the first Biennale that I saw, as the art in Venice was coming from all places for the first time.

My show, it’s for other people to say what it will leave in time. I think it’s a unique show, meaning it’s been created in unique times. For me, and for all of us, the pandemic has been the most traumatic and life-changing experience of the last 30 years. So, I hope I was able to capture what artists have cared about during these very complex times. It’s been hard because I did this show in the middle of a crisis; it’s hard to kind of zoom out and understand what artists are doing, but I really tried to focus and absorb what was happening around me. So, I hope that 20 years from now we’ll look at this show as a picture of what it meant to do art in a pandemic time.

Your curation of “The Milk of Dreams” is being celebrated in part for the historic prominence of women artists, which is seen by many as a long overdue correction. In which ways were women particularly important for the themes that you wished to explore?

I’m always very careful in sort of generalizing that because you are a woman you make a certain kind of work; I don’t think that’s true, so the fact that there a lot of women in the show was very much a process. I didn’t sit down in the beginning and say, “I’m going to have 85% women” — it just came out like that.

I can tell you what people say — I don’t know if it’s true! — but they feel like, in terms of mediums, there is a lot of crafts, there is a lot of materials and techniques that have been for too long considered to be minor, meaning weaving and pottery making, and there is plenty of that; it is not necessary my claim to say these are “feminine” works, though there is of course a long tradition, but I would love for people to see the show as a contemporary art show, and then if you realize that there are a lot of women, that’s great, but it’s not the point.

For me, it was important not to make a big statement about that because I know there is then a tendency to just dismiss it, because it’s a show about women. It’s not a show about women, it’s a show about metamorphosis and transformation with mostly women artists. But I feel like there is a sensibility, or an atmosphere, or a temperature that is a bit different from usual. I cannot tell you if it’s necessarily because it’s a lot women artists, but I try to control the mood, the sensuality of the show in a certain way, so hopefully people can understand that there is a different kind of mood.

There is an ecological element to the show, speaking to the human relationship with nature, which feels especially appropriate in Venice. On such matters, is art largely expression and imagination, or do you believe that art can affect change in society?

Interesting question. I think what I would say is that art’s relationship with themes such as climate change and the climate disaster has shift dramatically with the pandemic. I think before the pandemic, artists were portraying the climate crisis in a much more didactic way — maybe with documentary, or with more like finger-pointing techniques, which I always felt did not really help. But I think since the pandemic, when suddenly all of our preoccupations about the planet became so real and evident in front of us, I think artists are taking a different sort of methodology. In fact, that’s what you don’t see so much in the show, the sort of very political documentary about the climate disaster, partly because I’ve never been a fan of it, but also because I think artists are shifting to something that is more internalized and more personal when they come to talking about these issues, and in the show I think you see a subtlety that is a quite new. Not new in that it’s original, but new as a sort of a rediscovery of a much more intimate and human prospective on these big topics. So, when you walk into to the space at the Arsenale that has this giant installation with the soil by Delcy Morelos, I think as you enter it, you can kind of feel a connection with the Earth, and thinking in a way that we are all a part of this installation because our bodies will turn out to be earth and soil very soon, so there is a much more introspective way of tackling those things, which are very much a part of the Biennale, but in a more intimate way.

What role does Venice itself play in making the Biennale special?

It is an absolute role. The same show would not be as powerful if it happened somewhere else — in Milan, for example.

I think there is something so special about Venice, and the very ethos of the show when it was created at the end of the 1800s was the idea of introducing the contemporary to Venice, which was already a tourism destination back in the 1800s, but never for contemporary art, it was just about seeing churches and museums, so when the major of that time, Riccardo Selvatico, invented the Biennale, he had in his mind to bring contemporary life to the city of Venice.

Venice has not only this magic aura in people’s mind — you come, you’re on an island, you take boats to go around — but it’s also in a way an extremely contemporary city. It’s a city that’s not only visited by 30 million people every year, but it’s also a city that embraces and encapsulates all the paradoxical souls of our society, from the beauty to the ecological devastation. It really embraces all the most contemporary preoccupations and beauties of our society.

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The 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia is now running to 27 November 2022.To learn more and buy tickets, visit labiennale.org/en.