This May I attended my first Biennale in Venice (All the World's Futures) as a class trip led by my professor Briony Fer (what a treat!). Other than being completely overwhelming, exhausting and sort of like Epcot in Disney World for art lovers, I thought it was incredible and had the best time. The main exhibition, was curated by Nigerian curator and art critic Enwezor Okwui. The portion of the exhibition located at the Giardini included some great pieces and represented Western artists dealing with postcolonial material more than the portion at the Arsenale, which showed work by many African artists, many of them not too well known. At the Giardini, I really liked Ellen Gallagher's paintings. I had seen her solo show at the Tate Modern a few years back and remembered finding her work really interesting and visually stimulating and engaging.
Another highlight for me was seeing some of Walker Evan's photographs from his series "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" which I had studied in my course with Stephanie Schwartz on American Media. The photographs were hung on the walls of a room which also showed miniature scale models of architectural structures by Isa Genzken as a part of her project "Realized and Unrealized Outdoor Projects" made throughout the 1980s and 90s. I thought the play with urban/rural, utopia/dystopia made for an interesting dialogue between the works.
Some other highlights included:
Hito Steyerl's installation and video in the German pavilion
http://www.deutscher-pavillon.org/2015/en/
Moon Kyungwon & Jeon Joonho in the South Korean pavilion
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