Yet for all the apparent feminism and poeticism of Wilkes’ installation, it never quite gets to grips with the space. A reminder, no doubt, of women’s work and the Sisyphean task of endless domesticity. Elsewhere disembodied arms poke from a white washing-up bowl. Standing around the gallery, like a watchful chorus, are a collection of small, bald-headed ET figures, each with a stuck-on pregnant belly. Wilkes’ work isn’t about the impending political or global disaster but evokes the Proustian echoes of her suburban childhood. A twist of silver paper, a two pence coin, an empty toilet roll and a grubby hairband – the sort of stuff found at the back of the kitchen drawer – sit around the edge. A wooden frame covered with stretched muslin is strewn with dried flowers. Next door, in the British pavilion, Turner prize nominee Cathy Wilkes’ offering looks superficially similar. Dancers and acrobats do their stuff and a slithering squid climbs the steps to the pavilion. A postmodern Odyssey in which migrants look longingly out to sea and sing. This turns out to be the prelude to a perplexing but vibrant video that starts in the banlieues of Paris and ends in Venice. Entering through an underground dug-out of piled earth, we’re invited to climb the metal staircase onto a sea-green resin floor littered with detritus and interspersed with sea-creatures made from local Murano glass. The long queues for Laure Provost’s installation in the French pavilion show that there’s an appetite for doom-laden imagery. If there’s nothing left to believe in we can always grasp at straws. As the world collapses we can bop along in the Swiss Pavilion with five performers whose backwards motions generate ‘new, alternative forms of resistance and action’ or we can read the runes with a Korean female medium. And if it all that gets too much there’s always dance or a touch of shamanism to take your mind off things. Ice caps melt, oceans are polluted, bombs are thrown and the emotions expressed frequently turn out to be those from ersatz non-humans. Curated by Ralph Rugoff of London’s Hayward Gallery, May You Live in Interesting Times sees degradation and dissonance played out around every corner. It’s an appropriate metaphor for this year’s event, in which narratives seem to dissolve in a white mist of nebulous noise. A fitting image of our propensity for self-destruction in these dystopian times.Īrriving in the Giardini I found clouds of vapour enveloping the main pavilion, courtesy of the Italian artist Lara Favaretto. As thousands flock to the event the gorgeous palazzi sink ever further into the lagoon, damaged by the huge commercial cruise ships that daily disgorge yet more tourists into the fragile infrastructure. Venice, that city of dreams and the inspiration for artists and writers from Turner to Italo Calvino, sees its 58th art biennale.
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