Lithuanian Pavilion
Location: Castello 3200 and 3206, Campo de le Gate
Gut Feeling is a complex and site-specific work, in which artist Robertas Narkus, manoeuvres between an honest desire to change the world, a persistent belief in the promise of collaboration, his egocentric ambitions, and a flirtation with financial structures, technological progress and humor. The term “gut feeling” describes a sense of intuition, or, a hunch, which, according to half-forgotten folklore and recent scientific discoveries, links activities of the gut with the brain. In collaboration with a renowned fermentation specialist, scientists, fellow artists, local residents and small businesses, Narkus has created a social sculpture in one of the last remaining non-gentrified piazzas in Venice’s Castello district; producing a surrealist cooperative making a mysterious product from seaweed harvested from local waters. The exhibition is curator is Neringa Bumblienė.
Mongolia Pavilion
Calle S. Biasio, Castello 2131, 30122 Venezia
A Journey Through Vulnerability by Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajav (Mugi). The exhibition presents a series of installations, including soft sculptures, collages, and video pieces, created by the artist in the last 15 years. The works are spread across three different rooms titled “Miscarriage”, “Dream of Gazelle”, and “Pulse of Life” and narrate stories of women and animals, offering the viewer a journey through the intimate, fragile, yet powerful world of Mugi.
Nepal Pavilion
Location: Castello 994
The first-ever Nepal Pavilion will debut at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022. Tales of Muted Spirits – Dispersed Threads – Twisted Shangri-La will be curated by artists Sheelasha Rajbhandari and Hit Man Gurung, and will feature the works of artist Tsherin Sherpa. Trained in the art of thangka painting, Tsherin Sherpa is regarded today as one of Nepal’s foremost contemporary artists. He will collaborate with artists across the country to draw upon materials from a shared history and incorporate accounts encoded in oral cultures, woven languages, and quotidian rituals to implicate an intersectional and intertwined past that problematizes contradictory conceptualizations of Nepal as well as the broader Himalayan region.
Armenian Pavilion
Location: Campo della Tana, Castello 2125
Drawing from Andrius Arutiunian’s research, the Pavilion explores forms of organisation and world ordering, both musical and political, which remain outside the Western imaginaries. Here, the gharīb is imagined as a dissonance to the prevailing understandings of time, rhythm, and attunement. The exhibition is composed of a series of new objects and installations. The Pavilion uses sound and music as its main elements, with a large-scale piece called You Do Not Remember Yourself at its centre—an instrument playing with natural resonances and diaphony.
Bulgarian Pavilion
Location: Spazio Ravà, San Polo 1100
There You Are is represented by artist Michail Michailov and curated by Irina Batkova
Kenya Pavilion
Location: Fàbrica 33, Cannaregio 5063
Exercises in Conversation represented by Dickens Otieno, Syowia Kyambi, Kaloki Nyamai, and Wanja Kimani and curated by Jimmy Ogonga
Kazakhstan Pavilion
Location: Spazio Arco, Dorsoduro 1485
Commissioned by curator Meruyert Kaliyeva, the Kazakhstan presentation will feature contributions from the interdisciplinary collective ORTA, which was founded in 2015 by Rustem Begenov and Alexandra Morozova. The presentation was also inspired by the artist Sergey Kalmykov’s creations.
San Marino Pavilion
Palazzo Donà Dalle Rose, Fondamenta Nove Cannaregio 5038
Curated by Vincenzo Rotondo, the pavilion is represented by Elisa Cantarelli, Nicoletta Ceccoli, Roberto Paci Dalò, Endless, Michelangelo Galliani, Rosa Mundi, Anne-Cécile Surga, and Michele Tombolini
Montenegro Pavilion
Location: Palazzo Malipiero, San Marco 3078-3079/A, Ramo Malipiero
The Art of Holding Hands ~ as we break through the sedimentary cloud is curated by Natalija Vujošević. The exhibition presents works by artists Dante Buu, Lidija Delić, Ivan Šuković, Darko Vučković and Jelena Tomašević, as well as works from the Art collection of Non-Aligned Countries, by Zuzana Chalupová, René Portocarrero, the unknown author from Iraq, and a documentary on the work of the artist Bernard Matemera.
Portugal Pavilion
Palazzo Franchetti San Marco 2847
Curated by João Mourão/ Luís Silva, Vampires in Space is represented by Pedro Neves Marques.
Cuba Pavilion
Location: Isola di San Servolo
Terra Ignota (proposals for a New World)
Commissioner: Norma Rodríguez Derivet
Curator: Nelson Ramírez de Arellano Conde
Exhibitors: Rafael Villares, Kcho, Giuseppe Stampone
Kyrgyzstan Pavilion
Location: Location: Hydro Space, Giudecca Art District, Giudecca 211/C
Situated on the Island of Giudecca, The Republic of Kyrgyzstan Pavilion presents Gates of Turan curated by Janet Rady with artist Firouz FarmanFarmaian. The exhibition title ‘Gates of Turan’ takes its name from the Persian word Tūrān, meaning “the land of the Tur”, a historic region encompassing modern Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and northern parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The original Turanians were an Iranian nomadic tribe of the Avestan age, and their descendants make up the tribes of Central Asia and Iran.
Georgia Pavilion
Location: Spazio Punch, Fondamenta S. Biagio, 800/O, Giudecca
I Pity the Garden by Tbilisi-based artist duo Mariam Natroshvili and Detu Jincharadze is an immersive artwork about a premonition of the end. Through large-scale video installation and VR experience, the viewer is led into a realm of magical realism within the Anthropocene Epoch. For Natroshvili and Jincharadze, artists born a few years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the feeling of the end has always been integral to their everyday life and has existed as a cornerstone of their collective memory. Living within the volatile environment of the Global South means to exist with the constant anticipation of various kinds of endings. This end does not necessarily mean disappearance, it can also embrace the start of something new. However, the drama of how events unfold too often resembles a dystopian reality or a horrific fairytale, where the metaphorical garden dries out, dies, is set ablaze, and is ultimately rendered empty.
Croatia Pavilion
Location: via Garibaldi 1513, Castello
Tomo Savić-Gecan’s representation of Croatia at the 59th Venice Biennale of Art is a stealth project that both extends the artist’s uncompromising, several-decades long conceptual practice and acutely reflects our contemporary moment. Untitled (Croatian Pavilion), 2022, reconceives the notion of a pavilion as a fixed location, instead dispersing Croatian representation throughout the whole of the Biennale, while creating a discreet performative project that will stand out for its engagement with one of the most pertinent issues facing our time: what it means to be human at a moment when digital technologies are revolutionizing our lives. The piece triangulates its key tenets—the news, which is to say, the selective, subjective reporting on the events of the world; artificial intelligence, meaning the complex of algorithmic systems that play an invisible and yet dominantly insidious role in our present; and the flesh-and-blood bodies of humans, the baseline of human existence and experience. The exibition is curated by Elena Filipovic.
Cameroon Pavilion
Location: Liceo Artistico Guggenheim, Dorsoduro 2613 and Palazzo Ca’ Bernardo Molon, San Polo 2186
Titled The Times of the Chimera, the pavilion is curated by Paul Emmanuel Loga Mahop and Sandro Orlandi Stagl and presents Francis Nathan Abiamba, Angéle Etoundi Essamba, Shay Frisch, Justine Gaga, Salifou Lindou, Umberto Mariani, Matteo Mezzadri, and Jorge R. Pombo.
Grenada Pavilion
Location: Il Giardino Bianco Art SpaceVia Giuseppe Garibaldi, 1814
The Cypher Art Collective of Grenada comprises artists from several genres. Billy Gerard Frank, Ian Friday, Samuel Ogilvie, Asher Mains, Oliver Benoit, Angus Martin, and Susan Mains have been zooming together for the past year, preparing the presentation. Examining the annual ritual of the playing of Shakespeare Mas, they have explored the many inputs that have created the unique synthesis that is the culture of the tiny island of Carriacou, a sister island. Drawing on research conducted over the past couple years, the collective will present a new two-channel film installation, paintings, and more that will be part of a presentation organised by Daniele Radini Tedeschi.
Guatemala Pavilion
Location: SPUMA – Space For The Arts Giudecca 800/R
Aligned to the theme of the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, which is titled “The Milk of Dreams,” the National Pavilion of Guatemala will present an impressive painting titled Inclusion, by young artist Christian Escobar “Chrispapita”, who is also curator of the exhibition. The Pavilion’s General Commissioner is Felipe Amado Aguilar Marroquín, the Guatemala Minister of Culture. The artwork is 7 meters wide by 2.8 meters high and is an acrylic painting on canvas. Through the technique of hyperrealism, the artist wants to show “the human and inclusive gear as the engine of change and progress in Guatemala.” Chrispapita explained that this is a tribute to the artists of the golden age of Latin American murals, but also to the great Italian masters of the Baroque, attesting the great influence of Italian art on Guatemalan culture. “Inclusion” proposes an invitation to accept the differences between human beings and to respect them, with justice and equality, considering that each individual in its singularity is part of the society. It also exalts the greatest wealth Guatemala has, its people and its multicultural diversity as a strength for development.
The Netherlands Pavilion
Location: Chiesetta della Misericordia of Art Events, Cannaregio
When the body says Yes is a new immersive video installation by melanie bonajo, a Dutch artist, filmmaker, sexological bodyworker and somatic sex coach and educator. The installation, commissioned by the Mondriaan Fund for the Biennale Arte 2022, is part of the artist’s ongoing research into the current status of intimacy in our increasingly alienating, commodity-driven world. For bonajo, touch can be a powerful remedy for the modern epidemic of loneliness. the pavilion is curated by Orlando Maaike Gouwenberg, Geir Haraldseth and Soraya Pol.
Namibia Pavilion
Location: Isola della Certosa
The National Namibian Pavilion A Bridge to the Desert debuts at the 59. International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Starting point of the Pavilion will be a documentary Photo Exhibit, located in the ancient Casello delle Polveri in La Certosa, it will showcase a selection of photographs depicting the sculptures protagonists of the project The Lone Stone Men of the Desert. The exhibit also houses some Abstract Sculptures, created by RENN with recovered material collected on the island, including The Circles of Life and Metamorphosis. The exhibition then develops through a path of installations distributed in the most evocative areas of the park, inviting visitors to a “hunt for art” on the island, similar to how it happens in the desert. The Seek to Believe binocular series, arranged between the island’s entrance and the woods, will show you the path to follow to reach the so-called Sculptures Habitat, where in the walled woods area East of La Certosa park, are hiding some “Lone Stone Men” who traveled 11,440 km from Namibia to get until here.
The design of the pavilion, an artistic collaboration between RENN and the creative duo AMEBE, respects and aims to enhance the fundamental elements of the original work.
Bangladesh Pavilion
Location: Palazzo Pisani Revedin, San Marco 4013
Titled Time: Mask and Unmask, the pavilion is curated by Viviana Vannucci and the representing artists are Jamal Uddin Ahmed, Mohammad Iqbal, Harun-Ar-Rashid, Sumon Wahed, Promity Hossain, Mohammad Eunus, Marco Cassara, Franco Marrocco, Giuseppe Diego Spinelli.
Uganda Pavilion
Location: Palazzo Palumbo Fossati, San Marco 2597
For the Venice Biennale, two artists from Kampala, Uganda, Acaye Kerunen and Collin Sekajugo, present their work, in an exhibition entitled, Radiance – They Dream in Time at the Palazzo Palumbo Fossati.For every nation presenting in this global gathering it is a historic moment and Uganda’s inaugural pavilion at the Venice Biennale is a fertile ground in which to present the artists ideas of Kerunen and Sekajugo, for an audience to further understand the semantic intelligence of African and in this case Ugandan traditions and its modernity. The exhibition is curated by Shaheen Merali.
Syrian Arab Republic
Location: Venue: Isola di San Servolo
The Syrians People: a common Destiny
Commissioner/Curator: Emad Kashout
Exhibitors: Saousan Al Zubi, Ismael Nasra, Adnan Hamideh, Omran Younis, Aksam Tallaa, Giuseppe Amadio, Marcello Lo Giudice, Lorenzo Puglisi
Zimbabwe Pavilion
Location: Santa Maria della Pietà, Calle della Pietà
The exhibition I did not leave a sign? and features four artists; Kresiah Mukwazhi, Wallen Mapondera, Terrence Musekiwa and Ronald Muchatuta. The exhibition is curated by Fadzai Veronica Muchemwa. The Commissioner of the Pavilion is Raphael Chikukwa. In the Curator’s words, the exhibition seeks to embrace different realms of knowledge and ways of knowing; recalling scientific and technical minds who rebelled against the cultic centres of faith, and brought in a new age through remembering how the twentieth-century disaster demonstrated that science and technology are not infallible, after all, and that modern faith in the objective ideal was an illusion.
Info is extracted from the press releases of the pavilions