Zim pavilion named among best 10 at Venice Biennale
The Pavilion of Zimbabwe at the La Biennale di Venezia (Venice Biennale) country exhibition in Italy, has been named among the 10 Best National Pavilions at the global art showcase.
The country is one of many from around the world taking part in the 59th edition of the Venice Biennale country exhibition which opened on April 23.
Zimbabwe’s exhibition, titled I Did Not Leave a Sign Here?, will feature four artists, namely Kresiah Mukwazhi, Wallen Mapondera, Terrence Musekiwa and Ronald Muchatuta. The exhibition is curated by Fadzai Muchemwa, the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (NGZ) curator of contemporary art, and commissioned by Raphael Chikukwa, the NGZ executive director.
Leading online magazine Artsy, put the Zimbabwean pavilion among countries such as Singapore, hungary, the United States, Serbia and Korea among the countries with the “most engaging and mesmerising pavilions at the biennale this year”. Other countries which also made the list are Latvia, Germany, Greece and Britain.
Artsy, which “envisions a future where everyone is moved by art every day … and believes that the process of buying art should be as brilliant as art itself”, says of the Zimbabwean pavilion: “The turn to abstraction is especially effective in (curator Fadzai) Muchemwa’s curatorial statement on spiritual and institutional faith practiced in Zimbabwe. ‘I Did Not Leave a Sign?’ points audiences to alternative forms of knowing (both spiritually and intellectually) that leaves no material trace beyond a feeling.
“Muchemwa’s curatorial eye is expansive and focused on showcasing the heterogeneous ways Zimbabwean artists mount political and institutional commentary by evoking the tools of everyday life in their work.”
The arts magazine, however, noted that the national pavilions this year “echo some of the same wonderful concepts and histories, delving into the possibilities of our world and ourselves following the global pandemic and in the midst of mounting climate catastrophes”.
“Many of the artists exhibiting in national pavilions this year — whether or not they were responding to the pandemic — sought to create distinctively corporeal experiences for audiences that prioritised feeling over sight. Several artists aimed to reinvent our relationship with the screen, while others created robust presentations of ceramics and textiles, pushing sculpture and installation art to the fore,” it said.
Zimbabwe also has two artists — Kudzanai-Violet hwami and Portia Zvavahera — participating in the main exhibition, the La Biennale di Venezia, where over 200 other artists from across the globe are featured. The main exhibition is running concurrently with the country exhibitions.
According to Muchemwa, “this year’s exhibition seeks to embrace different realms of knowledge and ways of knowing: recalling scientific and technical minds who rebelled against the cultic centres of faith, and brought in a new age through remembering how the 20th Century disaster demonstrated that science and technology are not infallible, after all, and that modern faith in the objective ideal was an illusion”.
The Pavilion of Zimbabwe is bankrolled by the Zimbabwean government. It is located on the ground floor of Santa Maria della Pieta and is open from Tuesday to Sunday.