Canadian Entry at 2024 Venice Biennale Unveiled
Installation view of “Kapwani Kiwanga: Trinket,” 2024, Canada Pavilion, 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (photo by Valentina Mori)
The National Gallery of Canada, which is responsible for the official Canadian entry in the 60th International Art Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia, unveiled Kapwani Kiwanga: Trinket today in Venice, Italy.
The site-specific sculptural installation, located in the Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, invites visitors into an immersive environment. “Viewed from its facade, the building becomes a large-scale tableau: three-dimensional space collapses into a two-dimensional plane where distinctions between inside and outside dissolve through transparency, layering and transgressing of the building’s original boundaries,” said the National Gallery in a news release.
“Kiwanga’s work is anything but static: as one moves through the coil-like architecture, it unfolds, multiplying the visitors’ perspectives.”
Conterie, also known as glass seed beads, are the main material used in the installation. With roots in Murano in the Venetian archipelago, conterie have been used for trade and as currency around the world for hundreds of years.
“This installation addresses the often-destructive history of commerce, yet the work pushes further and asks one to consider how the trade of these beads for varied materials shaped the current world,” the news release says.
“The meeting of these distinct materials with the beads formalizes a place of exchange, asking one to reflect on questions of inherent value, aesthetics, and the complexity of global economic relations.
Kapwani Kiwanga: Trinket was curated by Gaëtane Verna, a Canadian arts historian and administrator, who is currently the executive director at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio. The exhibition was commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada and is presented in partnership with the Canada Council for the Arts and the National Gallery of Canada Foundation.
“Kiwanga is a relevant and provocative voice who places both a critical and aesthetic lens on manifestations of power now, as well as throughout time,” says Jean-François Bélisle, the National Gallery's director and CEO.
On June 13 and 14, an international symposium will take place in Venice on material culture, commerce and cultural transformation. Kiwanga’s project will be part of the program.
Source: The National Gallery of Canada
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