The Milk of Dreams

Quinn: Hello and welcome back to Pictorial on Relay FM. I'm Quinn Rose, and I didn't go to art school, but I love learning about art anyway.

Betty: And I'm Betty. I also didn't go to art school, but I also love learning about art. And this time I learned a lot about contemporary artists who I knew nothing about. So I'm learning even more than I ever have.

Quinn: This is a very exciting two parter. This is part two. So if you have not heard part one and all of the history of the Venice Biennale, you might want to go listen to that first. Or if you just want to hear about contemporary artists today that are exhibiting this year, I guess you can just ignore part one and go with part two. Contemporary art only.

Betty: Just a bit of an overview for review of what we talked about last time. And also, you know, just to sum up what the Venice Biennale is. It's basically a biannual event. Hence the name Biennale. It dates back to 1895. And so there's usually three parts of the show. There's a central show that's in kind of an industrial building in the old dock yards in Venice. It's known as the Arsenale. There’s a main pavilion called the Giardini Della Biennale. In there are the national pavilions. So these are the pavilions that are actually built by individual individual countries like France, UK, US, Brazil, Japan, like all kinds of, or many different countries from around the world. And every year more and more countries participate. And then each year there is a overall artistic director who curates the central exhibits. Oh, and then I should mention, in addition to the main show that's in these buildings in Venice, there's also like hundreds of collateral exhibits that happen all around Venice. And then there's like talks and events and all kinds of things. It's basically six to seven months, maybe even more or art everywhere. And so this year it was as I mentioned last time, it is the second time ever in the history of the Venice Biennale that a woman is directing the show. So like we said last time, they found another one.

Quinn: They did it. Congratulations.

Betty: And it is a Italian director this time. Her name is Cecilia Alemani, who actually currently works in, or for the last number of years have been working in Manhattan. And she actually directs the art program for Manhattan's High Line. But yeah, well, and we talked about last time that the previous show was actually three years ago in 2019. And as we know, a lot of things got pushed back and this was one of the things that got pushed back because of COVID-19. And 2019’s theme of the show was may you live in interesting times? We did. And I guess this year they were like, maybe we should have a title that's a bit more vague so that we don't predict the future again, who knows? So the title of this year's show is the milk of dreams.

Quinn: Yeah, we have, you've got to explain this to me. What does milk of dreams mean?

Betty: Well, I have been looking into the information of this show for like hours and hours researching. And I think it has something to do with dreaming and women.

Quinn: What? What? No, there has to be more. 

Betty: I mean, there might be, but you may just have to be a very fancy art person to get it. I don't know. 

Quinn: Oh my God, this is going to haunt my dreams.

Betty: Yeah. So look, I think like a lot of contemporary art, I really think they're intentionally making kind of vague, which does not help, obviously. But, and that's just my interpretation because I think maybe women and femininity is a part of the theme because there are actually a lot of women and female topics that are in a lot of shows or a lot of, there are many more female artists who are represented in this year's show than ever. And then a lot of the themes are, you know, surrounding what it's like to be a woman and things like that. So, I mean, maybe that's just a coincidence. I don't know.

Quinn: So the actual title of this does come from the title of a book, which they, they didn't totally just make this up. It's a title of a book that's like a surrealist book. That's fine, I guess. It’s still unhinged to just named the theme “the milk of dreams.” Because obviously that's just the most wild phrase. And of course it's like most obvious—they’re like, oh, well it's named after this, the name of this book. But like, obviously you don’t hear that context. You just hear it out of context, and you can't just put the word milk into things.

Betty: Well, and that's the thing. Yeah, it is inspired by the book by the British surrealist painter called Leanora Carrington. And again, surrealists, they don't always make sense. And in fact, I think their aim is to not make sense and distort reality. The fact that you're confused is probably they, they're going to think they did their job correctly.

Quinn: You know what, fair enough. I've done, I’ve played right into their hands. 

Betty: Yeah. So there is a lot of interesting things that's going on with this show. But I kind of, I'll just kind of point out a few. So as I mentioned, this show actually has a lot of works that are done by and devoted to women, women of color, trans people, gender nonbinary people. And actually it's the first time that a Black British artist has won their Golden Lion award, which is their, I guess, their best picture. So it is the first time a Black artist is the one who's heading up the British pavilion, but it was also the first time one has won a golden lion. And then I think there is another golden lion. There's two they usually give out, or at least they did this year. And then so the other pavilion that won the golden line for the best international exhibit was an American artist whose name is Simone Leigh. And she apparently was also the first Black woman to have, to head up the US pavilion. And, and that's one of the exhibitions I want to get into a little bit. I do think she has a pretty interesting group of works that was presented one of the other things that's kind of at the forefront of the show. And I mentioned last time, politics and contemporary events do affect the show as sometimes can be a pretty central to what happens in the show. Like sometimes there were student protests that completely disrupted the show or shut it down. And then in the seventies, there was one Venice Biennale where most of the art, they didn't present a lot of the artwork that is dedicated to the nation of Chile to protest General Pinochet at the time. And so back in February, the curator of the Russian pavilion resigned, and basically just said, there will be no Russian pavilion this year. And then again, this is the person who they are Russia, and they were supposed to represent Russia, but the curator themselves were like, we cannot say what our country is doing. So they resigned and there is a huge Ukraine pavilion this year.

Quinn: Obviously on one level, it's like, oh, well, it's kind of a bummer that Russian artists who have nothing to do with Russia's war crimes, like can't exhibit their work, but also at that point, what choice do you have? Like, it is the only principled stance is to withdraw. And also even if it wasn't the principled stance, if they tried to show up, even if the Venice Biennale allowed them to exhibit, like, one's going to go see Russian work or celebrate Russian work right now because some things are bigger than art shows. And so, yeah, at that point, there's just no choice but to withdraw and make a statement.

Betty: We are still living in very interesting times.

Quinn: The interesting times, they just start coming and they don't stop coming.

Betty: And then the other thing is, you know, even though there is, there’s a bit of diversity in this show, which is great. And you know, to the extent that some people—there are people who complain, who’s like, you know, there are so many women in this show, where are the guys, there still are a lot, a lot of guys by the way, just to make that clear.

Quinn: Oh yeah, just in case anyone was worried, men are still really represented.

Betty: Yeah, in case anyone’s worried. They still kind of dominate a lot of the exhibitions and, and, you know, it's not like they were told to go home or anything. You know, one of our favorite artists that we like to you know, dump on, on this show, Anish Kapoor has a show where he, of course uses his signature Vanta black, but this time he introduced some red in his work. So, you know, it’s a change. I'm not going to talk about this one too much, mostly because I'm, you know, again, this is not like I'm biased against Anish Kapoor or anything, but his exhibition—it just looks a little bit gory and bloody for my taste. But I'll put it in the show notes. If anyone wants to take a look, but it's, he uses red and black and mixes it together and it just looks like blood splatter everywhere. So I'm sure there's other meanings, but I didn’t look into it. As I mentioned before, the American Pavilion this year was done by, or has the artwork by American artists Simone Leigh, and it's actually curated by Eva Raspini, who's the chief curator of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. And I don't know if I mentioned this yet on the show, but I live in Boston now, by the way.

Quinn: Oh yeah. Surprise reveal, Betty’s no longer Canadian. 

Betty: Yeah. So well, you know, I still am Canadian and I think America makes you feel every single day when you are not American. 

Quinn: I bet you, you are the most Canadian you have ever been shortly after moving to America.

Betty: Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, I mean, you know, maybe in another show I'll talk a little bit about how it's been in America. I'll give a bit of a review.

Quinn: Uh oh, don’t do that. 

Betty: But you know, so far so good. But yeah, so, you know, I was very excited. I was like, oh, hey, Institute of Contemporary Art. That’s—well, not down the street, but close-ish to where I live.

Quinn: Yeah. And I used to live in Boston. And so I've also been there. Boston is now the artistic home of this podcast.

Betty: Yeah, apparently. So anything, so Simone Leigh, she mostly works in bronze and ceramics or as well as a lot of different materials, but mostly her works are sculptural. And her inspirations are kind of from a mixture of styles that include sculptures from West Africa. And she's inspired by these artworks done in cowry shells as well as Egyptian totem sculptures. She's also inspired by modern sculptors, like Alberto Giacometti and Max Ernst. And so she's kind of this amalgamation of you know, a lot of different inspirations, but when I was reading some of the descriptions about her work is that kind of understanding these diverse inspirations is pretty important in understanding not only her work, but understanding of the Black diaspora and how global it is and how there's just a lot of different diverse and complex influences that everybody has. So on the the rsc.net article, the first picture you'll see is the entrance to the US pavilion. And so the US Pavilion was actually designed, I think I talked about it in the last episode, but decades ago. It's been a permanent pavilion that's been there for a long time, but she actually—a part of her work, she actually put this thatched straw roof canopy that goes over the entire, the entire building basically, that covers that covers the pavilion. And that is one of the artworks. She talked about how her inspiration in making this building into a thatched grass roof is kind of in reference to how, you know, quite often the image of Africa and the representation of Africans by colonialists have generally featured this very exoticized view of the population. And this is kind of a representation I guess in a way of like this, how quite often African culture has been viewed in shows like these really, in the past. And that’s your introduction as you walk into the show and I do want to talk about, so she says she chose the title sovereignty because she wants to convince the ideas of self-determination. And so she does also want to represent Black female figures. But not in a, but she does it in an abstract way and she wants to, she wants us to have basically like a more complex understanding of Black femininity than just, you know, what's been traditionally represented. Before I get into some of the backstory, just kind of looking over some of her work, do you want to describe what kind of visually you see and what type of ideas you get from them? 

Quinn: Sure. The work that I'm looking at, the first work Sovereignty is—first of all, just a visually very impressive experience. It's in this courtyard. And as you said, there's like the thatched roof that's been put over the edges of this building that surround this sculpture on three sides. And then centered in this photo you have this giant black sculpture. The ground and the stairs and everything leading up and around it is white. So it is offset from the coloring of the rest of the building. It is basically a female form, but it is abstracted. The head is represented just by a gigantic circle way out of proportion with the rest of the sculpture. And there's a very long neck that is just a cylinder. And then the form of the body, there are no arms and the legs are very arched. Like there's quite a large curved space in between the legs. And then there are breasts are actually the most realistically depicted feature of the sculpture. They're instantly recognizable as breasts and they are, there's no other way to say this, very large and saggy and the nipples are pointed straight down. But that's, that's just like a realistic shape for breasts to be as opposed to the rest of the sculpture, which is a very unnatural abstracted feature of body.

Betty: Yeah. I'm glad you described the scene in such detail because one thing about her works that when I'm, you know, when I'm reading the notes of a lot of people who are talking about her work, cause I'm trying to think, okay, why like, why did this person win the best in show, like what is, other than I, you know, I think they're quite beautiful sculptures and an interesting perspective she's reflecting. But one thing that I did read that a lot of critics did say is that her artwork—they’re not just artworks that standalone on its own. Like all of her works integrate with architecture somehow. Like whether it's like this, the arched legs of the black figure, that's also kind of reminiscent of an arch you would walk through in architecture. Or it’s that thatched roof or just how her, the forms of her sculpture kind of works in concert with the rest of the buildings or the surroundings. There's always like a very careful integration that she delivers in her works, and the reason that's important other than just, you know, being very thoughtful is the interplay between art and architecture have always been a very big thing in the Venice Biennale. Like there's, it's never just about, oh, here's some really nice painting or, you know, or here's a really nice pavilion we designed, there's always a connection between the two and artists, as well as the curators and exhibition designers and architects, always collaborate in making a cohesive work, like within the entire building. So that's one of the reasons why her work is really significant in the context of the Venice Biennale. That is the connection that, you know, it makes with with the architecture. And then, and another example of that is so this is an artwork called Last Garment. And as another example of the artwork being a very important part of the architecture. So if you want to describe what you see in this work.

Quinn: This is inside in some kind of exhibit space, and it is a fully white room, blank walls, blank white walls, very large room. The only thing written on the walls is the title of the exhibit Sovereignty and Simone Leigh. And then in the center foreground of the photo we have what looks to be a pool. I mean, this could be one of those tricks where it's not actually water, but it looks like a big black pool, very shallow. And there is a sculpture in the left hand corner. It appears, from the perspective that I'm seeing—there’s nothing else in the picture so I can't quite see the scale, could be a trick, but it appears to be a life-sized sculpture of a woman with her hands, I think maybe on a rock or maybe not on a rock, just holding something, but she's basically bent over at her waist and she has her hands in the water on top of something, doing something. She’s wearing a dress that is sculpted with quite a lot of details in the fabric. And she has a short afro and I can't really make out what she is doing with her hands, but something about garments, I would guess.

Betty: Yeah. So yeah, this picture itself is isn't great. I figure this is probably something that would, you know, have a more impact if we actually got to go to Venice and see it for ourselves. So it's a bronze sculpture of a bent-over a washer woman of Jamaican heritage. So she's literally there washing clothes. So what's in her hand is I think like a glob of whatever clothes she's washing, which probably looks like it could, it could be a rock or maybe she's washing an over a rock. I'm not sure. But the imagery itself is tactually taken from a vintage postcard that depict basically colonial stereotypes of many people, but specifically Black people. And so this woman, this is a Jamaican woman, who's washing clothes and Simone Leigh herself actually, her parents came to the US as missionaries from the Caribbean. And so you know, it's a connection that is specific to her heritage. But it isn't just, you know, it isn't just about a Jamaican woman specifically, really this is representing, you know, a stereotype and that has been perpetuated in imagery in America. And of course, you know, the very overt message of, you know, a completely white room in a traditional, not only white institution, but our galleries tend to just have bare white walls as well. So it's a very typical art setting. But then there's literally a pool of blackness that is reflecting at us.

Quinn: Yeah. I find it really interesting the way that she's not only using a space in her work as incorporation with the art and architecture, like you were talking about, and also having all of these themes of deconstructing narratives and using stereotype. 

Betty: I do think—unfortunately I could not get myself to Venice.

Quinn: What, why not?

Betty: Yeah I know, but it definitely, I would definitely like to see this work in person and, but fortunately, you know, she is American. So very possibly there could be some of her work here in the US that we could see. So I definitely would like to see some of her work in person because of course, sculpture, it's always better to see it in 3d. We will move on now from America all the way over to Europe and very east in Europe to Ukraine, which I mentioned at the top of the podcast. This is an exhibition that's called Piazza Ucraina, which is Italian for Ukraine Square. And it features all kinds of artworks from Ukrainian artists and all of them have to do with what's happening currently in Ukraine, all of the artworks in the show I believe were created in 2022. And most of it have been by Ukrainian artists who either were in Ukraine or some still are in Ukraine who have all been affected by the current conflict.

Quinn: And also for frame of reference, because we record these a few weeks in advance, it is May 16th as we’re recording this. So if there are any major updates on the invasion of Ukraine that we are not referencing here, that is why.

Betty: Right, yes, exactly. So yeah, so this exhibition, it was compiled by the Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund. And it's an organization that's curating this Venice Biennale. So the exhibition itself, like I mentioned before, the pavilion has been designed in addition to the artworks that are featured in it. So the pavilion was designed by the architect Dana Kosmina. When you walk in Ukraine Square, there's a tall tower that's made of sandbags in the center of the exhibition. And it has three sides that have vertical wood panels that have reproductions of wartime paintings and illustrations on it with the sand tower in the middle. And the sandbag tower is, it not only references war, but the shape of it is also kind of reminiscent of a lot of Ukrainian architecture as well. And in a way it looks like it could be like, you know, in the form of an ancient monument, but of course the materials are of sandbags. This is an art work by the artist Katya Buchatska. Who was, she was from Kiev, but she was actually away from home at the time in Lviv, Ukraine, when it was attacked. And so she was—at the time all she had was a tablecloth. And so she basically made this artwork from the tablecloth that she had at the time. And so this was in March 2022. And then what you'll see on the tablecloth is that it looks like there's a bunch of markings on it and the markings are from the objects she just had lying on the tablecloth at the time. And then I think she used a pencil to draw on them and outlined the object she had on there. There's a quote from her that I think is quite interesting. So she said “making ART during war time is both too difficult and too easy. It's difficult because it's impossible to argue with the war and any statement looks helpless, and yet the all encompassing nature of the war makes it easy too, because there's a topic that you want to talk about exclusively.” And then, so she said after the initial shock that paralyzed her, she realized “I still have the right to testify, and that my experience, although not a combat one, is also important.” 

Quinn: Overall, I find this whole exhibit interesting from the way that it is images of the artwork and it is displayed in such a different way than most of the exhibitions are here because obviously the logistics of the situation is so different than the rest of the Biennale that you just have these like printed pictures of the artwork because you can't get all this stuff physically here and it's not physically available. But in itself I just think is so striking and it’s also so striking the way that it incorporates different reactions to this, like in the point of, of this tablecloth piece of like just representing a whole host of different experiences with this war and not just like directly being in the fighting or something like that. And it's like every single one of those experiences is important and paints a picture of what's going on.

Betty: Exactly. Yeah. And that's the thing with, you know, so many conflicts, but I think especially this one is that it's so many civilians or pretty much all civilians in Ukraine are just you know, deeply affected and devastated. Another one, so I think if you scroll to the next artwork, that really impacted me when I looked at it. And especially I read the artist's statement is that, so this work is by Daniil Nemyrovskyi and it's called The Young Family. So it’s a picture that was sketched by, I want to say red pen on paper. And the artist was, at the time he was holed up in a bomb shelter in Mariupol, which is a city that has had some of the worst and most relentless attacks by by Russian forces. And he documented his life underground you know, really for weeks. And so he said, he's now in the safe—not completely safety, in relative safety in Kiev. But yeah, he said at one point he, you know, he doesn't even know if he will live or die and you don't know, he didn't know if he was die from starvation or dehydration, but he said a quote from him was he said, art gave me a sense of a certain rationalization of events because art for me is a “way of knowing and a way to see.” And so he said "it was difficult to see in a shelter because it was near total darkness. And then every 15 minutes there were planes dropping bombs nearby.” So yeah, so I think art is already difficult to make when you can see, when you can have light. But apparently it seems like a lot of the works, a lot of the sketches and the drawings he did are in like almost near darkness. So he's just gives a whole new level to the conditions, just knowing the conditions that he created these works. I think it’s deeply impacting. 

Quinn: Yeah. I've seen other works before that were created by people who are under attack and the context in which a work was made can be a part of that art just as much as the physical product is, and this is definitely a case of that.

Betty: And another work that I kinda caught my attention was this work by an artist from Singapore in the Singapore pavilion. It’s by the artist Shubigi Rao. And it's called Pulp III: A Short Biography of the Banished Book as the next division that represents a 10 year research project actually by the artist who explores the history of book destruction, as well as the destruction of languages and literature in general. So books and literature and languages that perished over time in history and all kinds of different places. And it's presented in a form of a book and film and apparently a paper maze. Yeah, it explores the destruction of knowledge, languages, and books. But there's also explorations of things like alternative libraries and different printing communities and technologies over history. Specifically, actually she did a lot of research on Venice itself, there's a history of the printmaking was a huge part of a Venetian history back in the 15th and 16th century. And apparently you know, actually, some of the oldest known books in Slavic, Arabic, Hebrew, German, and French, can be traced back to being widely printed in Venice. Anyway, so she did a lot of research about various places around the world like Venice and Singapore and the like movements of literature there. But as well as, you know, the destruction of literature over time. For me, I think, you know, this kind of caught my eye because, you know, I really like books and libraries and reading. But also I do think the topic of banning books and different powers, like having control over knowledge and culture and what people can and cannot have access to is also a thing that I think is pretty important, like in many places around the world these days. And so, yeah. And so this kind of is an exhibition that explores a lot of topics surrounding that. So anyway, I think, yeah, I think this is this particular work, it actually didn't win any of the awards and isn’t one of the most talked about pieces. But I actually, I think this is kind of cool and again, I wish I could see it, but if anybody is in Venice and do get to see this, I would love to know what you think.

Quinn: As someone who is working on becoming an archivist, I am so thrilled that you have brought this work of art into my life. I think this is so cool. This is one of the all time pieces that I've seen on this show that I really want to go see in person. I want to walk through the paper maze, you know, I mean, I've already showed my hand, I think this is an extremely important topic. I think the preservation of books and of history is a really important topic. And I think the way that these things are destroyed through neglect or through direct attacks, or even just through the churning sands of time is something that it is really hard to combat and people, lots of people work all the time to combat that churn. And so taking as you put, like her 10 years of research and translating even just some of it into these immersive art experiences is such an achievement. And I want to go and I want to watch the entire 90 minute film that they made about the research. I want to watch it. It's for me, I'm the target audience.

Betty: Oh yeah, for sure. And even said, you know, I think I've read a part of an interview with her where she, I think it was either her or the curator who said, yeah, you know, the movie is 90 minutes. I'm sure most people are not going to sit through the whole 90 minutes, but we made it in a way that even if you watch for like five minutes of it, you get the gist of the information. So we hope people will take away important information as they leave, but I think you and I will be like, no, we'll sit there for 90 minutes. Like, we'll watch the whole thing. A quote from Shubigi Rao about this exhibition is she said “mass literacy movements, especially cheap forms of mass printing like pamphleteering, remains important to many global social movements and struggles for equality.” And I think this is really important, obviously for the reasons of it being important for social movements, but also these days with so many like digital forms pretty much everything or many things, you can get many things you can have access to in digital form. There's a tendency for people to think, oh, you know, books, we don't really need them anymore. We can just digitize everything or you can Google it or download it or whatever, which I think is important also because again, digitization does help to preserve knowledge, but at the same time, you know, we forget that cheap forms of mass printing is still important because not everybody has a computer. 

Quinn: Yep, yep, yep. The meat space of the world continues to be important, no matter what some people would desire, it’s an inescapable fact. 

Betty: Yes, for sure. Anyway, so yeah, so that's just kind of, you know, three pavilions out of, for the national pavilions, there is at least like there's less than a hundred, but almost. There’s a lot. And then on top of that, there's hundreds of other exhibitions and artworks all over Venice. So yeah, if you're there, you know, I would encourage you to check it out and let us know. And then hopefully in the future, one of these days, we can do a Pictorial from Venice, but that probably won't be for awhile.

Quinn: Reporting on the ground from the Venice Biennale. If you would like to support us in getting there, please support us on our membership. [laughs] No no, I don't think that podcast membership is going to get us to Venice, but if you did choose to support us in the membership drive, thank you very much, that episode now just lives on the feed forever. So if you want to go hear us talk about Doctor Who, that episode is available for you all now. And this will be the last time we mention this for another year. You're welcome. 

Betty: Yeah, it was great. Great fun. 

Quinn: All right. Thank you so much, everybody for listening to this episode of Pictorial, you can find our show notes at relay.fm/pictorial. Or you can find us on Twitter or Instagram @PictorialPod. You can also find me at Instagram @aspiringrobotfm.

Betty: And you can also find me on Twitter or Instagram @articulationsV. And I'm also on YouTube as ARTiculations and speaking of YouTube, we also have a Pictorial Podcast YouTube channel, where we will upload video versions of our audio episodes, accompanied by pictures of what we talk about. So for this one, you will enjoy some great contemporary art along with our voices.

Quinn: Thanks for listening, art enthusiasts!