Southeast Asian art at Venice Biennale: the good, the bad and the globalised
The art exhibition’s many pavilions are filled with works from some of Asia’s most famous contemporary artists, and some – not all – installations are worth a look
The unthinkable is happening at this year’s Venice Biennale, a contemporary visual art exhibition held in Italy.
The Southeast Asians are upside down. The Indonesians are drab, the Filipinos uninspiring, the Thai’s merely alright and the Singaporeans – well, the Singaporeans are full of magic, mystery and beauty. What is going on?
Every two years or so, for well over 100 years, Venice – the paradoxical city in a lagoon – hosts the world’s largest such exhibition. This year it runs through November. It’s a vast smorgasbord with work from across the globe, divided into two main components.
First, there is an official exhibition selected and edited by a new curator each time. Housed in the Arsenale (once Venice’s shipbuilding and armaments hub), the show extends over hundreds of hectares against a backdrop of raw concrete, iron and brick. Venice was an industrial power as early as the 1100s and the city’s lavishly decorated baroque palaces and churches were built on the back of a dynamic economy.
Second, there are the national pavilions – many located in the Napoleonic-era Giardini gardens alongside the Arsenale. These pavilions – not galleries – are predominantly European with a smattering of Latin American nations, alongside the Japanese, Koreans and Australians.
The use of the word “pavilion” is critical: it suggests a three-dimensional space that should be filled or curated.