GIRL POWER
Romping on the Rialto

Venice Biennale. Jun 2nd 2005 | Venice | http://www.economist.com

ROSA MARTINEZ and María de Corral, the directors of this year’s Venice Biennale which opens on June 12th, are like stars from a Pedro Almodóvar film. Clever, stylish, funny and well-connected, the duo is juggling to complete the job at hand in record time, on a reduced budget and amidst a Byzantine bureaucracy. If they are not yet on the verge, it is only because this is business as usual at the Biennale.
After the 2003 event—dubbed death in Venice because of the crippling heat and chaotic artists’ installations—the 110-year-old art funfair has decided to restructure. Its new president, Davide Croff, a former banker, is trying to rationalise the event both financially (by encouraging private finance to supplement a dwindling public subsidy) and curatorially by creating a three-year plan in which the two Spanish women will be followed by a New Yorker, Robert Storr, in 2007.

Ms de Corral, a former director of the Reina Sofía museum and of the Fundación La Caixa collection in Barcelona, Spain’s most important contemporary art collection, likes to take the long view. Her exhibition in the labyrinthine Italian pavilion will present a series of “constellations” of contemporary artists, rather than a single dominant view of how art is now. “I am interested in highlighting the relation between artists of different generations, in ideas that emerge like fragments and sketches.” On entering, viewers will see a massive cast staircase by Rachel Whiteread, a British sculptor, and then a series of galleries showing emerging artists such as Jorge Macchi, an Argentine, mixed with works by Francis Bacon, Philip Guston and Antoni Tapies.

Ms Martínez, on the other hand, is the baroness of biennali, having made her name as a peripatetic curator of international contemporary art expos in her native Barcelona, Istanbul, Busan (South Korea) and, most recently, Moscow. A biennial exhibition has an obligation to test the present, to challenge it, she says. “It provides a temporary global agora, a place for encounters between people…a chance to create new kinds of neighbourhoods between artists and audiences.”
Ms Martínez’s domain is the Arsenale, the monumental Renaissance armoury that once supplied the Venetian navy and is now open only for the Biennale. Traditionally this is the space for the most avant-garde art, and Ms Martínez is like an inmate who has taken over the asylum. She believes in art’s power to transform the status quo. “It can subvert established systems, rather than reinforce them.”
Since the two were appointed last August, much has been made of the fact that they are the first women to have done the job and they have chosen a record number of female artists—more than a third of the 92 names whose work is appearing in their respective exhibitions. But the curators differ on whether this Biennale is a feminist event. Ms de Corral says it is not. “I do not have a deliberate agenda to include more women.” But she has devoted space to Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer. Although they are best known for the radical feminist works they made in the 1970s, Ms de Corral has chosen to emphasise their prophetic qualities by selecting some of their word-based works that criticise the abuse of power in the media. “In the 1960s and 1970s, feminist artists used their bodies to express ideas, but these two were the first to use their minds. Their work has been incredibly influential.”

Ms Martínez believes this Biennale is none other than a feminist statement. She has invited the Guerrilla Girls, a feminist artist’s collective, to perform, and is trying to include as many female artists as possible. “I believe in positive discrimination”, she says. “I wanted half of the artists to be female. But I couldn’t find enough because women artists have children, relationships, break-ups that slow down their careers. These things happen to male artists too but somehow their careers continue. Women cannot afford to relax.”

Ms Martínez titled her show “Always a Little Further”, inspired by her favourite Corto Maltese comic strip, in which the hero is always pushing the envelope and making one more journey. She has no qualms about injecting the pop culture of comics into an exhibition that also includes a Samuel Beckett play, Rem Koolhaas’s architecture and installations by esteemed contemporary artists like the nonagenarian Louise Bourgeois. “I like to mix art forms, generations, media, genders,” Ms Martínez says. Among the more radical works here is Joana Vasconcelos’s chandelier made of tampons, which, from a distance, look like shiny white glass. “It is pop and ironic, beautiful and rich in metaphor—and it uses industrial materials in new ways,” she says with a grin.

According to Ms Martínez, curators are more necessary than ever. Art and commerce have always been interdependent. But, she sees herself as a mediator who strikes a balance between the economic necessities of the market and the utopian dreams of artists. “Like a therapist or an editor, a curator is someone who finds meaning in the chaos of messages that surround us. My motto comes from the philosopher Gilles Deleuze—we have to think, create, resist.” His words are a good banner for the Venice Biennale.

La entrada The Economist, Londres, Reino Unido, Junio, 2005 se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

Comisaria: Rosa Martínez

Venecia 15 de junio – 2 de noviembre, 2003

El trabajo de Santiago Sierra se inscribe dentro de un conjunto de operaciones críticas que ponen en cuestión la creencia de que el arte es una actividad autónoma, sublime y desinteresada. Evaluando las obras realizadas en los últimos doce años se constata la persistencia de temas y líneas recurrentes de actuación que remiten a una obsesión fundamental: la que deconstruye el minimalismo – como lenguaje hegemónico asociándolo a la dictadura de la producción y el beneficio.

En las acciones de Sierra, las personas se convierten en “ready-mades performativos” con los que conforma “historias situadas” que amplían la noción clásica de intervención específica. Conectar las cargas semánticas que sus actores personifican con las condiciones socio-económicas y geopolíticas es una forma efectiva de enlazar lo personal y lo político, lo local y lo global. En los proyectos realizados en el Pabellón de España en Venecia confluyen algunas líneas fundamentales de su poética: la obstrucción, la provocación lingüística y la reflexión sobre el trabajo como castigo.
Muro cerrando un espacio remite a las tecnologías de intermediación y de restricción del acceso representadas por las fronteras y por los límites, visibles e invisibles, que sitúan a las personas en diferentes territorios físicos, sociales o ideológicos. El muro polariza a los espectadores de la Bienal a ambos lados de un escenario hipotético, y da forma a tensiones físicas y políticas que remiten a ese extraño territorio de ciudades y países blindados que define las exclusiones contemporáneas. A diferencia del existencialista y absurdo «muro de la nada» de Beckett, Sierra construye muros que muestran que las fronteras no se han abolido sino que se han consolidado. En el interior del Pabellón la puesta en escena de los restos del trabajo de construcción del muro, el desorden y el abandono, se proponen como un ejercicio de desnudamiento de lo real, y remiten a otros restos y otras zonas de penumbra.

Palabra tapada es una sencilla escultura realizada con materiales pobres. Aquí Sierra actúa por omisión. Tapando la palabra “España”, suspende momentáneamente sus múltiples significaciones históricas y simbólicas. Prefigura así una controvertida emergencia de reacciones sentimentales, lecturas ideológicas y evaluaciones estéticas.

La acción Mujer con capirote sentada cara a la pared se realizó en el contexto físico del interior del Pabellón de España, sin presencia de público, el 1 de mayo de 2003. Durante una hora, una mujer permaneció sentada, inmóvil y en silencio, con un capirote negro en la cabeza. La obra, que el artista documentó fotográfica y videográficamente, insistía en el trabajo como tecnología de dominación, dejando constancia de la violencia de los procesos disciplinarios y del poder objetualizador del dinero. Las conexiones iconográficas con obras de Goya y con las torturas de la Inquisición pueden asociarse a muchas otras referencias iconológicas contemporáneas.

Rosa Martínez. Curadora del Pabellón Español de la Bienal de Venecia 2003

Extractos del ensayo La mercancía y la muerte, publicado en el catálogo Santiago Sierra. Pabellón de España. 50ª Bienal de Venecia. Editado por el Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores/Turner, 2003.

La entrada 50a Exposición Internacional Bienal de Venecia – Pabellón Español se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.