"The Milk of Dreams takes its title from a book by Leonora Carrington -1917–2011 - in which the Surrealist artist describes a magical world where life is constantly re-envisioned through the prism of the imagination. It is a world where everyone can change, be transformed, become something or someone else; a world set free, brimming with possibilities. But it is also the allegory of a century that imposed intolerable pressure on the very definition of the self..."
Cecilia Alemagni
curator
La Biennale di Venezia - 59th International Art Exhibition
The Milk of Dreams - Arsenale - First Part
At La Biennale di Venezia - The Milk of Dreams - curated by - Cecilia Alemani - until November 27. The exhibition unfolds in the Padiglione Centrale of the Giardini - see related posts - and in the Corderie, Artiglierie, and the outdoor spaces of the Gaggiandre and Giardino delle Vergini at the Arsenale complex. The exhibition includes over 200 artists from 58 countries, many of whom have never shown before at La Biennale and for the first time a majority of women and gender non-conforming artists are present, a choice that reflects an international art scene full of creative ferment and a deliberate rethinking of man’s centrality in the history of art and contemporary culture.
Related Posts
https://contessanally.blogspot.com/search?q=The+Milk+of+Dreams+-+Giardini+-+First+Part/
https://contessanally.blogspot.com/search?q=The+Milk+of+Dreams+Giardini+Second+Part/
https://contessanally.blogspot.com/search?q=The+Milk+of+Dreams+Giardini+Second+Part/
Simone Leigh
Making use of premodern and contemporary sculptural techniques, including lost-wax casting and salt-firing alongside culturally potent forms such as cowrie shells, plantains, raffia, and tobacco leaves, Simone Leigh has developed over the span of two decades a poetic body of sculptures, installations, videos, and works of social practice that centre race, beauty, community, and care as they relate to Black women’s bodies and intellectual labour.
Belkis Ayon
Belkis Ayon's work was created using the printmaking technique collography, a collage-like approach in which heterogenous materials are amassed on a plate to create a composition, allowing for a vast range of tones, textures, and forms; in Ayon’s able hands, the subtle gradations of blacks, whites, and greys takes on a magical, redolent weight. A self-declared atheist, Ayon dedicated her life’s work to the codes, symbols, and tales of Abakua, a secret Afro-Cuban fraternal society whose foundational myth is based on a woman’s act of betrayal. Throughout her oeuvre, Sikan, the princess typically depicted with no facial features but her eyes, is imagined in various religious scenes culled from Judeo-Christian scripture, as well as in mysterious scenarios redolent of Ayon’s life – one belonging to a real Afro-Cuban woman at the end of the millennium, occupied by her own interior dramas.
Portia Zvavahera
Portia Zvavahera sees through her dreams. She pairs the emotional intensity of her inner life with the spiritualism of the Indigenous Zimbabwean and Apostolic Pentecostalist beliefs of her upbringing. Most often, the artist’s ghostly, larger-than-life paintings communicate a spiritual understanding of quotidian moments, including renderings of her family, shape-shifting animals, figures attending wedding processions or kneeling in prayer, or women giving birth and engaged in secular rituals typically marked as feminine.
Niki de Saint Phalle
Niki de Saint Phalle is best known for her Nanas - French slang for “girls” – large, leaping female figures painted in kaleidoscopic hues and often found frolicking through fountains or city squares – and the Tarot Garden - 1979–2002 - a vast sculpture park she built in Tuscany - Italy, alive with fantastical mosaiced and mirrored creatures. de Saint Phalle’s female forms are bulbous and broad, with breasts, bellies, and buttocks accentuated with painted hearts, flowers, suns, and mandala-like concentric circles.
Rosana Paulino
Rosana Paulino’s practice spans drawing, embroidery, engraving, printmaking, collage, sculpture, and installation to explore the history of racial violence and the persisting legacy of slavery in Brazil, deconstructing the production and dissemination of racist theories that served as justification for European colonialism and the slave trade.
