Review /African representation + Feminism / Venice Biennale June - August 2022 ITALY
MARGERITA PULÈ
CRAFTING
Fantasy
M
uch has been said about the female presence in The Milk of Dreams, and about its curator, Cecilia Alemani’s feminist approach in creating the exhibition, engaging a huge number of women artists, and acknowledging female and feminist aesthetics and methods. Much has also been said about the surrealist elements which dominate many of the exhibition’s narratives, drawing on the work of Leonora Carrington whose book gate the exhibition its name. And equally, much has also been written about the show’s five capsules, the small semi-historical, semi-independent sections which explore key themes pertinent to the exhibition as a whole. I would like to focus on another aspect of the show, which relates to all of the above elements in some way; that of the exhibition’s merging of traditional, sometimes ancient, crafting techniques, with contemporary, often futuristic practices and imaginings. Take, for example, the lead crystal sculptures by Romanian artist Andra Ursuta that dominate a large room, alongside huge monochrome wool on canvas pieces by Rosemarie Trockel. Some of Ursuta’s figures are missing limbs, and others lack a head entirely. As if to compensate, they have been given strange, unhuman appendages, alien-like tentacles, or extremities shaped like industrial tools. The figures are hybrid beings and bring to mind deep-sea creatures, but also – strangely - domesticity. Their unsettling contortions, textural detail and subdued colours make them seem at once immediate and remote. Ursuta works with casts of her own body, fusing them with found objects, and combining traditional lost wax casting techniques with 3d scanning and printing. Anyone who has tried to work with casting glass will know that it is so difficult that it makes
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even bronze-casting look like child’s play; these pieces, with weird shapes and chilly lead crystal colour palette push the boundaries of a traditional craft, both conceptually and technically. The combination of post-human worlds, speculative imaginings, and textural, tactile craft is ever-present in The Milk of Dreams exhibition, both at the Giardini, and the Arsenale. Straw and fabric works jostle with cyborg-like creatures, while animals and animalistic forms compete for space with oil-dripping technologies and futuristic images. The vast spaces are filled with equally huge textile sculptures (Tau Lewis’ animal heads), found-object pieces recalling weaving techniques (Bronwyn Katz’s salvaged bed springs and pot-scourers), alongside ceramic herds of animals (Raphaela Vogel’s giraffes), over-sized fluorescent flowers (Tetsumi Kudo’s forms), and deconstructed robotic figures (Geumhyung Jeong’s assemblage). Alemani has said that following the covid-induced zoom calls and online existence of the exhibition’s planning phase, she instinctively moved towards more tactile and three-dimensional pieces. This she certainly did, presenting us with a vast array of materials from stoneware, ceramics, collage, and textile, as well as aluminium, iron, and synthetic materials and liquids. The human figure – in infinite variations – is ever-present too. Later in the Giardini, we come across Mrinalini Mukherjee’s ambiguous upright forms. Made using the ancient Arab hand-knotting and weaving technique of macramé, the figures contemplate us as earnestly as we contemplate them. Their ambiguity endows them with strength, and almost gives them a menacing air; are they alien figures? Do they represent mythical sexual organs? Or are our minds playing tricks, and seeing forms where none exist?
Zigzagging through the exhibition in both venues are themes of mythology, speculative ideas, a strong female presence, and a strong thread of continuity from ancient times to the future that we have created for ourselves. The hybridism and anthropomorphism that speaks to us from the past relates to how lives have changed in the 21st century, how we endeavour to have control over our bodies and our destinies, while faced with environmental and territorial challenges that we have ourselves caused. The crafts that are present in the exhibition are not limited to ancient or hand-made skills. Also very much
visible is a more contemporary craft, if one defines it as such; that of computer programming, working with modern technologies, to build (or craft) an action, algorithm or even an intelligence. Geumhyung Jeong’s DIY robots are created by the artist herself, ‘crafted’ together from DIY parts. Tishan Hsu’s work pushes this definition even further – does using innovative fabrication techniques and materials place him outside the boundary of a ‘maker’ in the craft tradition? Is the presence of the hand-made in literal terms a prerequisite for the definition of craft? Or is his work moving towards a new kind of craft, where artist and digital technology work alongside each other?
