At the Venice Biennale, everyone’s lining up for the toilets

By Fiona Sinclair Scott, CNN

Venice (CNN) — After a dramatic lead up to this year’s Venice Biennale, involving the tragic death of its chief curator, outcry over Russia, Israel and the United States’ participation, and a prize jury that abruptly quit, it was, in the end, a set of portable toilets that stole the show during the opening week of the “Olympics of the art world.”

The toilets were the doing of choreographer and performance artist Florentina Holzinger – Austria’s representing artist who, together with curator Nora-Swantje Almes, staged the event’s most popular and brilliantly mucky pavilion show titled “Seaworld Venice,” which tackles themes of purity and impurity, actions and consequences and ecological catastrophe.

More than half a million people are expected to visit the monumental international art fair over the next six months to see the work of over 100 artists and 99 nations, spread across 31 permanent national pavilions and a series of other exhibition spaces.

In the preview days before the public opening on Saturday, hundreds of people lined up to enter the Austrian pavilion, a white cube structure that first opened in the Giardini della Biennale in 1934. Once inside, visitors were encouraged to urinate in two onsite toilets which filter and pump sanitized water back into a large aquarium tank where performers float for four hours at a time, breathing through a scuba mask. Off to the side was a room filled with spewing, brown wastewater. Inside the flooded pavilion was yet more water: in one pool, a naked woman rode a jet ski, in the other, a series of more unclothed women performers climbed and hung from a large rotating weathervane sculpture — suggesting a new direction (or a new world order?) was needed.

According to Almes, the show asks viewers to rethink the patriarchal systems “that currently control our lives.”

An anticlimax

Meanwhile there were no queues to enter the US and Russian pavilions and the Israeli building stood locked and empty (a smaller satellite show was staged outside the main Giardini instead). Russia was banned from the Biennale in 2022 following its invasion of Ukraine, but was allowed back by organizers this year. The decision was met with significant backlash including condemnation from the European Commission, which threatened to pull a $2 million funding grant for the Biennale if it did not reverse the decision by May 11.

During the pavilion’s preview, a brief but loud protest led by Russian dissident disruptors Pussy Riot and the Ukrainian feminist group FEMEN might have been the most exciting thing to happen at the underwhelming and carelessly presented group show of live performance and video art.

While President Donald Trump has a strong command of the attention economy, his national pavilion — featuring the sculptures of Alma Allen — did not appear to draw crowds during the preview days. The pavilion and its organizers had attracted some criticism for their chaotic handling of the artist selection process. But once open, all was quiet within a hollow space that has historically shown the work of some of America’s greatest artists including Louise Bourgeois, Jasper Johns and, more recently, Simone Leigh. Leigh triumphed at the 2022 Biennale when she was awarded the prestigious Golden Lion prize after becoming the first Black woman to represent the United States.

For all the hullabaloo, some of the most provocative pavilions were also the most lackluster, inadvertently making way for exhibitions elsewhere to shine.

Beyond the Giardini

While the Giardini and nearby Arsenale area are the official sites of the Biennale, during the week leading up to the fair’s public opening, Venice transforms into a mesmerizing cultural carnival of events happening across the floating city.

At the Gallerie dell’Accademia, a historical museum on the edge of the Grand Canal, renowned performance artist Marina Abramović has staged an interactive show titled “Transforming Energy,” which encourages those who visit to slow right down. Visitors are led by the gentle hands of Abramović’s young white coat facilitators into a series of rooms where they can stand amongst crystals, open a door that leads to nowhere in particular and make “telepathic” calls using vintage dial phones. Still busting boundaries as she approaches her 80th birthday in November, Abramović is also now the first living woman artist to be honored with a major exhibition at the more than 200-year-old institution.

In an age where most people view art not with their eyes, but through the lens of technology, Abramović banned the use of phones in her show, insisting that people be fully present in the work. “We live in the most difficult moment of human history right now,” she said. “The telephone has become part of our body.”

“You will leave this exhibition different,” said her curator Shai Baitel. “More kind, more peaceful.”

Elsewhere, “Helter Skelter” at the Fondazione Prada is a joint exhibition of works by two seminal American artists – Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince – proudly celebrating a version of America that is often forgotten or undervalued.

“A country forever tarnished by its history of slavery; a country defined by its remarkable musical traditions rooted in Black culture; a country of doing without, but making good,” wrote the show’s curator Nancy Spector in a statement. “A country of spirit and prayer and freedom of expression; a country of protest and subcultures and humor and celebrity.”

Further afield, on a small island across the lagoon, stands a remarkable addition to Venice. Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo is a new cultural space comprising a private home (designed by film director Luca Guadagnino, no less) and public exhibition spaces showcasing works from the vast collection of art patron Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo.

Re Rebaudengo has been an influential supporter of young artistic talent for decades, and her latest project follows this tradition. Six permanent outdoor works are dotted around the property, including a large rocket by Polish artist Goshka Macuga and a shocking pink tree, commissioned specifically for the island, by Pamela Rosenkranz. A warped-looking chapel has also been installed by American artist and architect Hugh Hayden.

“This is a place to dream,” Re Rebaudengo said, standing on the dock of her private island for hours, warmly greeting each visitor as they stepped off the boats.

Away from the empty pavilions, protests and political theater of the Biennale, it was often the most unexpected projects, many of them led by women, that left a lasting impression and sense of possibility.

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