The east comes to the biennale
By Jackie Wullschlager
FT
June 13 2009 02:51
If McQueen’s Giardini and Nauman’s `Topological Gardens’ announce
closing time in the gardens of the west, the east is hammering on the
global gate and Venice, nexus of ancient trade routes and a city
dripping with oriental reference, is a piquant backcloth. This year
sees the strongest ever presence of Middle Eastern and south-west Asian
states, including offerings by Palestine and the United Arab Emirates,
Mona Hatoum’s solo exhibition and noteworthy national pavilions.
I loved Eygpt’s `Lightly Monumental’. Solemnly vertical abstracted
paintings of everyday Cairo types ` dressmaker, barber, mother and shy
teenage son ` in a luminous gold and black tonality reveal Adel El Siwi
as a figural painter of Modigliani-like grace, while enormous,
pared-down palm leaf sculptures ` `The Worshippers’, `The Lovers’, `The
Bread Peddlar’ ` by Ahmed Askalany captivate with their lightness of
being and tread a defiant line between classical sculpture and folk
art.
As distinctive, and lit by a dovetailing of east-west traditions, is
the retrospective of Armenian painter Gayane Khachaturian, who died
last month, at the lovely Palazzo Zenobio: though a fantastical
storyteller ` silvery lute player, red-haired jugglers ` Khachaturian
is also as abstract and tragic in her use of colour and form as her
countryman Arshile Gorky.
Hers is an individualistic, sincerely expressive art, unfashionable at
international biennales but finding a place in the diversity of
off-site Venice. So too, for different reasons, with Palestine c/o
Venice on the tranquil Giudecca island: its achievement is to be here
at all. The title implies the chronic impermanence faced by Palestinian
artists; the work mirrors that instability and marginality. Taysir
Batniji’s `Hannoun’ is a large floor of pencil shavings. Shadi
HabibAllah’s doodled figures animated on a pale screen is called `ok,
hit, hit but don’t run’. Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti’s sound piece
entraps visitors in a claustrophobic padded cell. Small statements,
each speaks forcefully in the context of Jawad Al Malhi’s panoramic
photograph of a West Bank settlement `House No 197′, and Khalil Rabah’s
A Geography: 50 Villages ` 3rd Riwaq Biennale, a film accompanied by 50
help-yourself postcards giving precise identity to Palestinian
villages. The place was packed, there was a rush on the postcards, and
reactions were more animated than almost anywhere else in Venice.
Exhibitions run throughout the summer