The Lionesses of the Venice Art Biennale 2022

Can art save the Planet?

At the Venice Biennale, the theme of climate change has always been on the agenda, alongside a commitment to becoming increasingly sustainable: with this edition, La Biennale has achieved carbon neutrality. The Golden Lions of the 59th International Art Exhibition titled The Milk of Dreams — in Venice from April 23 to November 27, 2022 — arrive the day after #EarthDay, World Earth Day, and are declared stances for the planet, for nature, and against discrimination.

“A magic world in which life is constantly reinvented through the prism of imagination, and in which one is allowed to change, to transform, to become other than oneself. It is the power of art and artists,” says the director of La Biennale Arte 2022, Cecilia Alemani.

Our Biennale Guide dedicated today to #EarthDay presents:

• the Biennale Gardens by Laura Scarpa (cover)
• Earthly Paradise, a soil labyrinth by Delcy Morelos at the Corderie dell’Arsenale by Marta Formentello
• installation Eden Like Garden at the Egypt pavilion, photo by Pietro Gallina
• exhibition The Milk Of Dreams at the Corderie dell’Arsenale, photo by Settimo Cannatella
• sculpture by Marguerite Humery at the Arsenale, photo by Lorenzo Cinotti
• Demis Marin the tailor-performer, taking measurements for Persona, at the Uruguay pavilion, photo by Settimo Cannatella
• installation by Ayman Baalbaki, Lebanese artist, photo by Marta Formentello

Katharina Fritsch and Cecilia Vicuña are the 2022 Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement

The award ceremony for the Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement awarded to German artist Katharina Fritsch and Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña for Biennale Arte 2022 is scheduled for tomorrow, Saturday, April 23, 2022, at Ca’ Giustinian, the headquarters of the Venice Biennale.

The curator, Cecilia Alemani, spoke about Fritsch, recounting: “The first time I saw a work by Katharina Fritsch in person was precisely at the Venice Biennale, in the 1999 edition curated by Harald Szeemann, the first Biennale I visited. The imposing work that occupied the main hall of the Central Pavilion was titled Rattenkönig, the Rat King, an unsettling sculpture in which a group of giant rats is arranged in a circle, their tails knotted, as if in a strange magical ritual. From 그 moment on, at every encounter with a sculpture by Fritsch, I have felt the same sense of wonder and dizzying attraction.”

And of Vicuña, she speaks of her artistic language with its strong fascination for indigenous traditions, anticipating many recent debates on ecology and feminism, and imagining new personal and collective mythologies. Alemani explains that “many of her installations are made with found materials and abandoned debris that the artist weaves into delicate compositions, in which the microscopic and the monumental seem to find a fragile balance: a precarious art, at once intimate and powerful.”

The Lions

Article by Laura Scarpa and Lucia Pecoraro.
Photos of the works by Fritsch and Vicuña at the Central Pavilion of the Biennale are by Marta Formentello.