Christine Macel’s Viva Arte Viva Focuses on Art and Artists

“Today, in a world full of conflicts and shocks, art bears witness to the most precious part of what makes us human. Art is the ultimate ground for reflection, individual expression, freedom, and for fundamental questions. Art is the favourite realm for dreams and utopias, a catalyst for human connections that roots us both to nature and the cosmos, that elevates us to a spiritual dimension. Art is the last bastion, a garden to cultivate above and beyond trends and personal interests. It stands as an unequivocal alternative to individualism and indifference. It builds us up and edifies us. At a time of global disorder, art embraces life, even if doubt ensues inevitably. The role, the voice and the responsibility of the artist are more crucial than ever before within the framework of contemporary debates. It is in and through these individual initiatives that the world of tomorrow  takes shape, which though surely uncertain, is often best intuited by artists than others.”

The nine Trans-Pavilions of the 57th Venice Biennale:

The Pavilion of Artists and Books opens with a focus on the between action and inaction, between laziness and active engagement. It looks at the different ways of being an artist. It analazyses the reasons to make art today.

After this Pavilion, the exhibition develops organically in a series of pavilions, rooms or “stanze”, inviting visitors into an experiential journey from interiority to infinity.

The Pavilion of the Common welcomes the visitors in the Arsenale around the work of artists exploring the notion of the common world and the way to build a community, as a way to counter individualism and self-interests, which represent a worrisome threat in today’s troubling climate.

The Pavilion of the Earth focuses on environmental, animal and planetary utopias and dreams.

The Pavilion of Traditions analyzes how, during the past 30 years artiss started to question the traditions through the lens of dialogue between the old and the recent.

In The Pavilion of the Shamans, many artists subscribe to the definition of the artist as a “shaman”, and there are also those who become “missionaries”, as per Duchamps’s definition, stirred by an internal vision.

The Dionysian Pavilion aims at celebrating the female body and its sexuality, life and pleasure without forgettnig joy and a sense of humour. A lot of the artists in this pavilion are female artists.

The Pavilion of Colours can be described as the “fireworks” at the end of the journey through the Arsenale, where all the questions presented in the preceding pavilions come together to provide what might be described almost as an “out-of-self” experience prior to the final chapter.

The Pavilion of Time and Infinity showcases how the concept of time comes up today with a new metaphysical quality. Facing the laguna the artist either disapperars or reinvents himself as “improved” through the power of hypnosis.