In April, the Venice Art Biennale returns after a three-year hiatus due to the pandemic (preview days 20-23; first day of public opening April 23; until November 27). In the fourth of our five-part overview, curly the editorial staff names the exhibitions it is most looking forward to in the national pavilions of the Giardini and the Corderie dell’Arsenale. To read the first part of our pavilion overview, click here.

Simone Leigh
American pavilion, Giardini

Simone Leigh’s video Untitled (M*A*S*H*) (2018) – featuring vignettes of a counter-story of black nurses on the frontlines of the Korean War – was, for me, one of the most moving and masterful works of the 10th Berlin Biennale. I couldn’t wait to see more work by her. But, while I admire the ever larger figurative clay and bronze sculptures she has exhibited over the years, such as To stick on (2019) at the Whitney Biennial, they have yet to grip me to the same extent. So, I’m open to being converted by this exhibition, and I already like its title: ‘Grittin’.

– Matthew McLean, Creative Lead, Frieze Week

Niamh O’Malley
Ireland in Venice, Arsenale

Niamh O’MalleyThe recent exhibition at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton perfectly accompanied the Derek Jarman retrospective upstairs. However, unlike Jarman’s later assemblage reliefs constructed from found objects, O’Malley constructs his configurations of glass, limestone, steel, and wood with careful attention to the meanings contained in his materials. There is neither accident nor chance here: his project resides in the surfaces of the world. His sculptures can appear low to the ground, like grids on the road, or overhead, like strange solar panels. She is an artist who deals with the language and concerns of minimalism: what does presence look like in sculptural form? What information about our existence resides silently locked away in this material? O’Malley’s flimsy glassware, which hangs so precariously, barely held together by greening copper, evokes a familiar unease about home.

– Sean Burns, Deputy Editor

Tomo Savic-Gecan
Croatian pavilion, Castello, via Garibaldi

I’m still on the fence about algorithmically generated art, but Tomo Savic-Gecan Untitled (Croatian flag) (2022) looks like it would be worth trying to track it down. “Every day for the duration of the 59^and edition of the Venice Art Biennale,” the press release explains, “the main story from a different, randomly selected global news source provides the data that feeds an artificial intelligence algorithm, which at his turn prescribes the time, place, duration, movements and thoughts of a group of five performers in the city of Venice.’ As the writer Francesco Tenaglia notes in his article for the April issue of curly, the performance of duration has had an oversized role in recent editions of the biennale; it’s nice to see this trend continuing, despite being one of the first major international arts events to be held during the COVID-19 pandemic.

– Chloé Stead, Associate Editor

Pilvi Takala
Finnish pavilion, Giardini

I spent a lot of time looking at Pilvi Takala’s work around 2012, when, after being shortlisted for the Frieze Foundation Emdash Award, she appointed a committee of children to figure out what to do with the prize money. Next, Takala focused on playfully exploring sometimes unspoken social and economic conventions – interning at Deloitte where she did nothing, trying to enter Disneyland in an unlicensed princess costume – works that I loved as much as I felt provoked by their difficult engagement with issues of consent and privilege. A decade later, I’m interested to see his new film for the Finnish pavilion, Close the watch (2022), which documents how she reacted to the closed world of a Finnish shopping mall, where she spent six months secretly working as a security guard.

– Matthew McLean, Creative Lead, Frieze Week

Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol
Chilean pavilion, Arsenale

Peat – a topsoil of dead plant matter that is notable for slowly decomposing due to waterlogging and high acidity, conditions chemically similar to pickle brine – is something of an unsung hero in paper math. of the deceleration of the climate crisis. Its marshy deposits in remote glacial tracks cover just under three percent of the earth’s surface, ranging from polar circle to polar circle, but store 25 percent of the carbon trapped in dirt: more than double the total volume held by the world’s forests. Enter Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol to sing his praises. The collective – which brings together a sound artist, an art historian, a filmmaker and an architect, as well as several institutions active in ecological and ethnographic conservation – borrows its title from the name of Selk’nam for the bogs that extend on the Tierra del Fuego archipelago at the southern end of Chile. The project’s advocacy against the perennial threats of mining and forest fires works in symbiosis with Selk’nam demands for recognition as an existing people, since most official histories regard their language as extinct.

– Patrick Kurth, editorial intern

Alberta Whittle
Scotland + Venice, Arsenal Docks

Since winning the Frieze Artist Award in 2020, Alberta Whittle has presented her moving image works at Edinburgh’s Jupiter Artland, the Liverpool Biennial and the British Art Show 9 Tour. Through performance, both film and installation, the Barbadian-Scottish artist tackles the impact of colonialism on the collective memory of black people with powerful emotion and rigor. I was lucky enough to receive an invitation to an intimate performance by DIS – A lesson in reversal or unlearning (2021) last summer at Art Night at Two Temple Place, a spellbinding neo-Gothic building on the banks of the River Thames in London. Dressed in white, Whittle and a group of performers, including poet Ama Josephine Budge, held court, making full use of the echoes of the building to summon the ghosts of the river by stamping their feet and emphasizing the role of water in The Atlantic slave trade and the wider African diaspora. Whittle’s work for Scotland + Venice will surely continue her practice-based research into the legacy of slavery and a projection of decolonized futures to come.

– Vanessa Peterson, Associate Editor

Zsofia Keresztes
Hungarian pavilion, Giardini

In an unusual but refreshing move, Zsófia Keresztes, who will represent Hungary with the exhibition ‘After Dreams: I Dare to Defy the Damage’, has waived the usual secrecy surrounding the biennale and posted an image on Instagram of one of her works awaiting transport to Venice. For those familiar with the artist’s pastel-hued mosaic sculptures, the photo didn’t offer any big surprises but, having seen his works in a few group shows over the past few years, it has whetted my appetite for this what Keresztes might do when offered center stage.

– Chloé Stead, Associate Editor

For additional coverage of the 59th Venice Biennale, see here.

_{Main Image: Alberta Whittle, RESET, 2020, video again. Courtesy: the artist, Forma, London and Frieze; photography: Matthew A Willia}