Monthly Archive for July, 2011

From Laura Gonzalez, Artlog

The Venice Biennale is a lot like the FIFA World Cup, but for art. It features multifaceted displays of national talent in an ambiance of courteous yet zealous competition for the ultimate prize – in Venice it’s the Gold Lion, in the World Cup it’s, well, the cup. For both cases, the participants have been carefully selected through a series of preliminary rounds and eliminations. Making it to the final competition is a reward in itself. It’s no coincidence that the Venice Biennale has also been termed “the Olympics of Art.”

The World Cup and the Olympics are known for their unabashed displays of raucous nationalism. Flags, patriotic chants, and cross-national rivalries are the order of the day. In Venice, however, we find a completely different atmosphere, one that furtively tries to ignore the fact that it is, at base level, a competition between countries. Recently, many have been trying to downplay the fact that the Biennale has historically relied on the age-old concept of nationality and national identity.

The format of the Venice Biennale, which consists of participating countries exhibiting one or several of their compatriot artists within their own pavilion, has come under fire over the last few years. Nationalism, some say, is no longer a relevant frame for an artists’ oeuvre. We live in a transnational, globalized world, where boundaries between countries have largely ceased to determine one’s identity or creative output.

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