Thursday, October 27, 2022

Kudzu, the Biennale, and Views


This was the major motivation for my visit: Precious Okoyomon's To See The Earth Before the End of the World.  It references the fact that kudzu was first introduced to farms in Mississippi in 1876 to try and stabilize soil, which was being eroded due to the cultivation of cotton ... and then it took over.  So on the one hand it becomes a metaphor for the entanglement of slavery, racialization, and diaspora within the natural world, and yet also holds the capacity for change and revitalization - or so the catalog entry puts it, rather drily, considering the wild abundance of this installation. The difference between the installation pics at the opening and now are huge!  

[photo Roberto Marossi, in April]



Of course, there was (as ever with the Biennale) too much to take in at once, and not all of it exceptional, but I'd single out a truly disquieting video by Diego Marcon, The Parents' Room (2021), 


and then (harking back to Bethlehem, and steel mills), Marianne Vitale's Bottles and Bridges: Advances in Collective Obliteration (2021): she creates models of American bridges, railroad tracks, and so on - and then burns them, and casts their charred skeletons in bronze.


I could go on for an age about the Biennale ... and then, of course, there's the rest of Venice.  Here are some favorites from today ...






Also, according to my wrist, I've walked  28,000+ steps today, so I'm going to bed now.

 

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