There is a jarring juxtaposition between the experience of walking through the curated exhibit of the Venice Biennale and hopping from pavilion to pavilion. The international exhibition, entitled Viva Arte Viva, has been clipped, pruned, and polished by Christine Macel in order to provide a slick, cohesive experience that has been neatly thematized, branded, and explicated. Walking from room to room, the audience experiences formal and thematic comparisons manufactured by the curator to further the thesis of the exhibition.
The magic of this biennale, however, is that the guise of this strict authorial control on the part of the curator quickly melts away beyond the walls of the international pavilion. The Giardini, the Arsenale, and the city itself are dotted with scores of national pavilions, each conceived of and executed more or less independently of each other and the larger show. This means that the experience of visiting multiple national pavilions in a day, week, or month allows the opportunity for novel comparisons and fluid, organic thematization.
My favorite of these unintentional comparisons is between the Finnish and Icelandic national pavilions. The former can be found within the Giardini, housed in a “proper” pavilion among large, “prominent” countries such as Spain, Germany, or Egypt. In contrast, the Icelandic pavilion has found a home in an empty warehouse on Guidecca island, a working class locale somewhat isolated from the frenetic tourism associated with Venice proper (this is not, however, entirely sincere, seeing as our hostel for the month is on Guidecca).
The framing effects of pavilion location are unavoidable. The Finnish pavilion must contend with and carry the weight of its implicit association with the 20th century, largely Western political order. The Giardini is a near black hole of political implications that threatens to overwhelm the individuality of a smaller pavilion like Finland, rendering it lost. Ironically, Iceland risks being forgotten as well through an entirely different mechanism. The Icelandic pavilion is buried deep within Guidecca in a mostly residential area, and a tourist would have to specifically seek out the pavilion, taking either a water taxi or vaporetto (public transport boat) to the island. In its placement, the Icelandic pavilion feels like a collateral event rather than part of the main show.
Luckily, we are here in Venice for a month, so some of these effects are mitigated by our ability to travel, explore, and find works of import in pavilions the short term tourist may have to pass over. The Finnish pavilion contains a video installation entitled The Aalto Natives by Nathaniel Mellors and Erkka Nissinen. A short film playing on a loop anchors the piece and tells the story of Geb and Atum, two demigods assigned with the challenge of terraforming and forging a new society. The video is buffeted by animatronic figures of Geb and Atum, seen below. Throughout the film, the animatronic pair swivel about and even talk to each other, expanding the narrative beyond the film.
Atum and Geb from The Aalto Natives. Images taken from Curamagazine.
The Aalto Natives trades on absurdist comedy, both visually and through its narrative. The film is a series of crudely drawn animations, low frame-rate claymation, and live action, and the previously mentioned photos of Geb and Atum capture the essence of the piece perfectly.
In the film, Atum seeks the perfect cultural model on which to base a new civilization. Naturally, he chooses Finland, stating that he envisions a future built on social democracy, nationalized health care, and oceans filled with herring. The plot then follows Atum observing his civilization develop and slowly become a corrupted wasteland full of sex, violence, and absurd genetic mutations.
The Aalto Natives poignantly and hilariously critiques both Finnish and global culture and history. The advanced wasteland envisioned by Mellors and Nissinen suffers from many of the same ills as our contemporary society, but to the nth degree. The myth of any state (yes, even Finland!) being a utopia or socially primed for utopic development is thoroughly debunked. The film is full of witty self criticism, charm, and an ingrained sense of inherent Finnishness, which is a difficult balance to strike. In placing Finland at the center of a fictional universe, Mellors and Nissinen sarcastically aggrandize a nation surrounded by political superpowers at the Giardini but refuse to fetishize a country commonly regarded as a modern socialist utopia.
This theme of a double sided mirror of criticism, reflecting internal and external flaws, continues in the Icelandic pavilion. This exhibit, entitled Out of Control in Venice, was created by artist Egill Sæbjörnsson and consists of two parallel, three story coffee shops. Each floor only contains one or two sets of child sized tables and chairs with lights and decorations roughly modeled in plaster, providing a childish sense of incompleteness. The real show, however, can be seen though face-shaped holes in the walls of the pretend cafe. As seen in the images below, the viewer, from either side, looks out upon a three story tall face of a troll.
Out of Control in Venice. Right image taken by author, left image taken from The Guardian.
These trolls, named Ugh and Boogar, carry on a sprawling conversation involving a variety of subject matter: politics, the best recipes for cooking humans, burp jokes, Snapchat, and even emotional fragility. During these conversations, Ugh and Boogar are constantly eating animated Biennale tourists who walk through a door near their mouths, in effect framing the entire exhibition as a literal tourist trap.
The experiences provided by the Finnish and Icelandic pavilion are both absurdly comical, though the Icelandic pavilion may have accomplished this goal on a grander scale. Sæbjörnsson resorts to a similar brand of political and cultural satire as Mellors and Nissinen. At one point in the installation, Ugh and Boogar transform into grotesque caricatures of Donald Trump and Margaret Thatcher, while at another they critique Snapchat culture through a gag involving the face-swapping function of the app. Sæbjörnsson also turns the lens on himself and his country, mostly through the very idea of representing Iceland with a set of grotesque trolls, which he posits as iconic figures for the island nation.
Both the Icelandic and Finnish pavilions aspire to great heights, seeking a fresh, comedic, and often philosophical critique of modern society. Furthermore, the fact that both of these exhibitions frame this criticism as discussions between unrecognizable, grotesque, and strange characters further unites them. In the end, both of these pavilions are, in some way, about a unique type of discourse between two parties and challenges therein. In the Finnish pavilion, characters must be reduced to a cold, futuristic homogeneity in order to achieve this discourse, while the Icelandic pavilion assumes a common devolution in order to achieve the same result.
It is appropriate that both of these pavilions rely so much on communication because the reality of exhibiting in a international biennale necessitates dialogue. Conversations are constantly occurring between different historical iterations of the same national pavilions, the political histories and realties of nationstate participation in the biennale, and the locale versus the global. Both Finland and Iceland had to contend with these conversations in order to make an impactful artistic statement during this biennale, and it is clear that they found their voice through absurdist strategies, comedy, and self reflection.
“Both the Icelandic and Finnish pavilions aspire to great heights, seeking a fresh, comedic, and often philosophical critique of modern society.” This quote interests me a lot. You mentioned in class that certain pavilions might have to fall back on humor because their voices, or their position in the world, perhaps does not lends itself to a more heavy-handed and aggressive manner of presenting themselves on global stage. I recently went to a Latvian Pavilion, and met one of the attendants, and from what I’ve gathered, their commentary was remarkably self-deprecating. This is vastly different from that of Russia or Germany. A country asserting itself and its political critiques is something that is neither welcome nor easy for many. We are lucky to have both the resources and the precedence to make such moves towards politicalization. There is a pattern of certain countries being expected to do so, in fact. Take the German Pavilion, for example: dealing with a politically charged space, they often tear up previous architecture and alter the space quite drastically. This is in part, of course, due to their budgets—they can afford due their wallets and their cultural clout to make big statements and big changes. I would love to study the trends in self-presentation by regions in the Biennale and compare this with their political and economic clout in the world, art world aside.
The placement of pavilions is something that I’ve thought a lot about recently. Imagine if the “core” and “periphery” nations were more consciously reversed in terms of their location—so, the big powers, such as China, Russia, Germany, the U.S, etc. were all pushed out of the central location of the Giardinni and Arsenale. I suspect that this would lead to much more attention being given to the countries that arguably might need it more. They are the countries whom might seek international recognition and visibility, or a stamp of approval from the art world (as problematic as that might be).
Do you think that there are benefits to Pavilions being smaller? Do the allow for more levity and cohesion than a larger such as Viva Arte Viva might provide? I’ve certainly felt as if the authorial voice in the separate pavilions is of course stronger, because often there is only one or two artists. They are in some respects equally branded and thematized. So I feel as if it isn’t necessarily fair to say that we avoid organic thematization by attending the “outside” pavilions.
Do you think that the experience of finding the pavilions, such as the one on Giudecca, contributes to any feelings that you may have with the pavilion? I’m just remembering Julia hunting so hard for the Lebanon exhibit, and how she must have been somewhat euphoric to finally find it.
Do you feel as if any other country’s pavilion could get away with the blatant political humor, such as the Donald Trump and Margaret Thatcher caricatures? Could the U.S Pavilion have shown the piece, for example, with the same success?