Your Sunday Inspiration ✨

Venice Biennale, Robert Zhao Renhui, Tara Laure Claire Sood, Paddy Summerfield and more ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ From the series Keepers of the Ocean (2019). Image credit: Inuuteq Storch Good morning from Venice, where the opening week of the 60th Art Biennale has just drawn to a close. We’ve been crossing the city in search of photography and lens-based art amongst the countless affiliated and external exhibitions responding to this year’s Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere theme, from the irresistible clarity of Peter Hujar’s Portraits in Life and Death to Roberto Huarcaya’s sprawling photogrammic sculpture which dominates the Peruvian pavilion. With over 300 artists participating in the Biennale this year, drawing medium-specific conclusions is difficult, but doing so can give a sense of how photography is being interpreted in the wider scheme of international contemporary art. The main exhibition – this year curated by São Paulo Museum of Art’s Adriano Pedrosa – tackles Foreigners Everywhere in a number of ways. Firstly, by reminding us that artists from the Global South have been painting, weaving and drawing outside of Western art historical norms for generations; and secondly, that testimonial artmaking – community-facing film, documentary photography, and archival research – can translate overlooked, often postcolonial experiences to audiences with a renewed urgency. The first approach sees a wealth of vibrant murals and South American modernist painting by the likes of Eduardo Terrazas; the second is where photography and documentary film are most effectively employed – in Bouchra Khalili’s excellent stories of migration from people without citizenship, and in Italian Tina Modotti’s simple but piercing photographs of the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s. The message seems to be that when educational, historically-rooted narratives are needed, Pedrosa reaches for images. The most significant example is the chamber devoted to The Museum of the Old Colony by Pablo Delano, a rich archival installation exploring the US’s continued exploitation of Puerto Rico. Black-and-white pictures show the brute force of the American military alongside the colonial infantilisation of Puerto Ricans used to justify the denial of statehood. A similar thread runs through South West Bank, a separate Biennale exhibition featuring artists from Palestine (and allies) who use the olive tree as a longstanding motif of resistance, and which features photographs by Adam Broomberg and Rafael Gonzalez. © Pablo Delano Also in the main show, Sabelo Mlangeni’s Country Girls and River Claure’s Warawar Wawa series give a photographic voice to South Africa’s rural gay communities and Andean mining groups respectively, but the potential for photographic speculation – for pictures to imagine and exist beyond just their representation of marginalised communities – is often drowned out by the sheer volume and scale of work in the exhibition. Imaginative and physical space is needed for the fictive, ambiguous power of photographs to resonate; an intimate pairing of images by Dean Sameshima and Miguel Ángel Rojas – who both explore the sexual possibilities and encounters of movie theatres – achieves this, allowing for a slower and more riskily satiating viewing experience. Wash your mouth with soap, an off-site exhibition by Soap Culture, is another strong example of this more delicate style of photo curation, with works by Thomas Mailaender, Mona Hatoum and Wolfgang Tillmans benefitting. In the national presentations, Inuuteq Storch’s Rise of the Sunken Sun is the photo highlight, transforming the Danish pavilion into homage to Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenlandic) identity, combining his family archive with recent projects exploring the colonial history between Denmark and his homeland. His Necromancer works, made during the Covid-19 pandemic, are printed on transparent acrylic, creating a ‘looking through’ effect which is destabilises the supposed authority of the image common around this year’s Biennale shows. There’s a lovely line to explain the decision: “The photographs appear to have been drawn with darkness rather than light,” Storch says. In Venice, Robert Zhao Renhui is striving for ecological enlightenment Ahead of his show at the Venice Biennale, Renhui discusses anthropocentrism – and how his work addresses this thorny, colonially influenced issue [Read more]( [Build the way you want]( Alex Schneideman remembers his friend Paddy Summerfield One of several artists inspired by Summerfield’s iconic Mother and Father series, Schneideman reflects on the life of an Oxford icon [Read more]( [Build the way you want]( Tracing India’s ‘dying arts and artistry’, one portrait studio at a time Tara Laure Claire Sood is fascinated by South India’s retro portrait studios, reimagining them with fresh Bollywood and fashion tropes [Read more]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( [1854 Media Ltd, 244-254 Cambridge Heath Rd, Cambridge Heath, London, E2 9DA, United Kingdom Click here to update your email preferences]( [Click here to unsubscribe from all emails](