Wednesday 21 August 2024

Venice Biennale 2024: Part four

There was a large section of the biennale devoted to the portrait, and of all the various approaches the one that made most sense to me was the work of Dalton Paula. His Full-Body Portraits (2023-24) were from a series of sixteen paintings of historical figures of African descent who led, or were  involved in, anti-slavery resistance movements in Brazil. It was however the way that he treated the painting of these images that impressed me. He had laid white grounds down for each painting and had left gaps in the paint where the white showed through as cracks or fissures in the image. A stylistic device that suggested that the gaps were metaphors for images of people whose very appearance was constructed upon a white western model. Each of the figures is dressed in western style, standing or sitting in some sort of relationship with western articles of furniture. They inhabit a western world that totally dominates the Brazilian society that these people existed in. 

Dalton Paula: Sketchbook study

Dalton Paula

The work of Xiyadie, a father, farmer, gay man, migrant worker and artist, reminded me that the term 'artist' tends to single us out and that we are also fathers, mothers, factory workers, worried old men, happy young women, gardeners, walkers, mountain climbers, politicians, refuse collectors, cleaners and botanists. He cuts paper into visual narratives of his life, images that have documented his life as a queer man in China. For instance 'Sewn' (1999), describes his difficulty in accepting his sexuality while trapped in a heterosexual marriage. Pain and the helplessness of being trapped in a domestic setting are suggested by a huge needle piercing the roof of his house, while a large snake slithering inside him represents his desire. His images are allegories, but because they are made, by cutting out thin white paper and mounting it on black, then highlighting areas in a very limited palette, they seem very fragile, as if the life depicted could at any time fall apart.   

Xiyadie: 'Sewn' 1999


Xiyadia: Detail

Xiyadia: Gate

Yuko Mohri wasthe artist representing Japan this year. Her work done by inserting wires into decaying fruit, 'Decomposition', was a demonstration of how you could generate sounds and light from a very natural process. When you insert wires into the fruit you in effect re-create the fruit as a battery. The juice in a lemon, acts as an electrolyte, while the wires act as the battery's terminals. When the wires are inserted into the fruit, chemical reactions occur that create an electric current. The fruits’ internal state is shifting constantly as it decays, which in turn is modulating the pitch of a sound or the intensity of a light. At the same time the fruit is emitting a sweet smell of decay, and its exterior is looking more and more withered or going brown. The fruit was presented on items of furniture that felt as if they had been found in a second hand shop, and old cabinets had been reconfigured to take lights or to now become speakers.



Yuko Mohri 

My thoughts about art working as a battery and the idea of it working as a form of energy transmission were immediately triggered and I began rethinking some of my ideas related to sculptures using electrolysis. I had already done several drawings related to sculptures that also worked as electrolysis tanks, using metal coating from copper terminals via dilute aqueous solutions of copper sulphate and sulphuric acid. LEDs are so sensitive now that they only need a tiny amount of electricity to make them glow. I really do need to get back to some of my ideas and re-develop them, which is one of the reasons you go to these exhibitions, there is always going to be something that sparks off either a new idea or gets to to return to old ones refreshed.

In particular an artist from South America really did enthuse me to get back to my large complex drawing ideas. I have sort of avoided finishing some of these, not wanting to put in the effort, as it does involve a lot of concentration and physical control to cover large areas of paper. This is not just about sustained drawing invention but I also have to have enough formal control to enable some sort of visual coherence to be constructed. This has often in the past meant lots of adjustment and removal of initial invention, so that the various elements can fit together as a whole. 


Santiago Yahuarcani is of the Aimeni clan of the Uitoto Nation of northern Amazonia, which is at present thought of as part of Peru. His images collect together the memories told by his ancestors, the sacred knowledge of medicinal plants, the continuing existence of nature spirits and Uitoto creation myths. For Yahuarcani both the landscape and its inhabitants are conscious, because he believes in an animist view of the world. The work is in effect a conversation with the artist and his surroundings, a conversation that is facilitated by the artist's mind inhabiting the plants, trees, and animals of the Amazon, as well as conjoining with creatures from spiritual worlds and other powers that emanate from the landscape he lives in.

Santiago Yahuarcani: Fight between yucca worm and grasshopper: 2022


Santiago Yahuarcani, Shiminbro, el Hacedor del sonido (2024

I went back to the Arsenale to look at Santiago Yahuarcani's work twice and if I had been in Venice for longer would have done so again and again. Each time I could see more visual ideas and the way he fitted it all together was terrific and so exciting. He had also used some ideas that I had come up with myself, such as fish slippers and he had no worries about using multiple and various scales in the same image. I of course looked him up on line and realised like myself he also made images about particular isolated narrative aspects of the mythos he was working with, such as his 'Fight between yucca worm and grasshopper', which again I emphasised with. 





Santiago Yahuarcani: Details

The work of Santiago Yahuarcani re-energised me and reminded me that you can make work that is full of complicated detail and yet it can also be funny, exciting, inventive and in Yahuarcani's case colourful. Above all, looking back on the images I took when there, I'm very aware that instead of reflecting on the exhibitions visited this year, I ought to get on with my own work. I have a stained glass window to finish and have already returned to making large drawings that fit together to create a complex narrative about my own world and how strange that is.

Fish slippers
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