The famous international art exhibition in Venice is underway. While Germany has won the Golden Lion with an unsettling work, here's a tour of some of the Biennale's highlights.
Image: DW/S. Dege
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Venice Biennale 2017: a celebration of art
The motto of this year's Venice Biennale is "Viva Arte Viva." Curator Christine Macel invites visitors to celebrate freedom of art and explore the dream worlds of artists.
Image: Getty Images/Awakening
Venice, international hotspot
Long live the arts! "Viva Arte Viva" was the motto chosen for the 2017 Venice Biennale by French curator Christine Macel. The celebration of culture is well-needed in these times of uncertainty. In the Venetian Arsenal and the Giardini area, 85 nations are on show, with 120 artists exhibiting their works. Top-class exhibitions expand the world art show on the Lido.
Image: DW/S. Dege
Golden Lion for the German Pavilion
Moving like expressionless zombies, young actors walk through the public in the German Biennale pavilion. Artist Anne Imhof set up an unsettling multimedia and performance installation dealing with the transformation of the body. She took home the Golden Lion prize for best national pavilion.
Image: DW/S. Dege
Hype in Korea?
Lurid colors, blinking signs: from the outside, the Korean pavilion looks like a fun fair stand inspired by Las Vegas. Inside, the atmosphere is serious and concentrated. An artist has minutely documented a political assassination. Another installation conveys people's different tempos around the world.
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Refugees building lamps
A young refugee is working on a lamp's frame. Just like two years ago in Vienna, the Danish artist Olafur Eliasson set up a workshop in the Venetian Arsenal. He invites people from war-torn countries to build lamps here, a project he views as an artistic intervention and that's part of the Biennale.
Image: DW/S. Dege
The artist at rest
An alarmingly thin person appears to be resting under the blanket of this bed. Slippers were tidily left by its side. A couple of artists from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, Yelena Vorobyeva and Viktor Vorobyev, are behind this attention-grabbing work at the Venice Biennale. Created in 1996, it is entitled "The artist sleeps."
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Humor gives art wings
"There was this idea that the ideal place to be was up in the air." Danish artist Soren Engsted builds humor into his sculptural works by adding text projections and a soundtrack to them. "Levitation" is his latest work. It has been well-received at the Art Biennale in Venice.
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Azerbaijan's PR coup
Azerbaijan picked a noble spot for its national pavilion: the Palazzo Lezze in the heart of Venice, right near the Piazza San Marco. The Azeri pavilion, however, grabbed the media's attention through a surprising statement from its German curator, Martin Roth: "Azerbaijan is a blueprint for the tolerant co-existence of people of different cultures," he said of the authoritarian state.
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Girl tames horse
Argentina is presenting a real eye-catching work. With her piece "The Horse Problem," artist Claudia Fontes makes a huge white horse jump around the pavilion in the Arsenale. A life-sized figure of girl who can stop its leaps with the movement of a hand is there as well.
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The swan's song
Czech artist Jana Zelibska filled her homeland's pavilion with a herd of swans. The installation also includes a projection of waves, and two portraits of women hang on the wall. The 76-year-old artist's work "The Swan Song: Now" is filled with poetry. Zebliska's art often deals with gender relations.
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Biennale: the art world's second major stop
The Biennale in Venice marks the second international highlight of the current art season, which is unusually packed this year. Athens opened the program with the first part of the documenta in April. The famous German art show will then open its second part in its usual location, Kassel, in June. The international artworks shown at the Venetian Lido remain on display through November.
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Venice is filled with tourists as usual. As always, the overloaded vaporetti move through the canals, past magnificent palaces and piazzas.
These days however, a particular type of visitor is adding to the action. The Venice Biennale is the second major stop of the art season, after the first part of the documenta's opening in Athens. A further highlight will come in Kassel, for the second part of the documenta, followed by the Skulptur Projekte Münster, and the Biennales in Istanbul and Lyon this fall. Collectors with money to spend will also head to the Art Basel show along the way.
Enigmatic works: "Out Of Hollowness" by Rina Banerjee in the International PavilionImage: DW/S. Dege
This year's Venice Biennale, directed by French curator Christine Macel, features 86 national pavilions and 120 artists; 103 among them are taking part in the Italian art show for the first time.
Disturbing art at the award-winning German Pavilion
The German Pavilion offers a strong impression with the work of Anne Imhof, the country's rising star. Her work "Faust" is a live performance combining people, animals and drawings. Imhof set up a glass and steel structure on which visitors stroll while actors move around enigmatically underneath their feet. A donkey and two Dobermans appear. An ethereal soundtrack keeps getting louder, reaching deafening levels. A topless woman moves around like a tiger caught in a cage. The visitors are startled; several people whisper to each other. No one laughs. The enigmatic physicality of the work causes consternation.
The German Pavilion was awarded the Golden LionImage: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Merola
Susanne Pfeffer, curator of the German Pavilion and Imhof's supporter, must be satisfied. The length of the queue to see the performance was a good omen: Germany won the Golden Lion, the Biennale award for the best national pavilion.
The only country playing in the same league is perhaps the US, featuring the Los Angeles painter Mark Bradford, with his combination of monochrome and color-filled paintings and a phallic sculpture. The tower of the historic pavilion has been painted in gold.
The multimedia installation in the Russian pavilion showcases refined light and acoustic effects, filling the space with outlandish creatures offering references to the history of art, such as Max Ernst and Picasso. And then there's also the young photographer Sasha Pirogova, working with tightly choreographed video sequences.
Projections in the Russian PavilionImage: DW/S. Dege
Celebrating the works of Geta Bratescu
Things are quiet just a stone's throw away: unlike in the country itself, no civil war is threatening the Venezuelan pavilion. The art critic Juan Alberto Calzadilla Álvarez offers here his views on "freedom of art" through a work combining photography, film and drawings.
A solo exhibition of the great Romanian artist Geta Bratescu, now aged 91, fills her homeland's pavilion. It provides insight into the studio of the artist, painter, sculptor, photographer and tapestry maker. This pavilion alone makes the trip to Venice worthwhile.
Art can be like a labyrinth, playing with the perceptions of its viewers. This is well-demonstrated by the young Polish artist Alicja Kwade and her installation "WeltenLinie," made of mirrors and partition walls. Kawde's art reflects real life: there are many ways to the Venice Biennale, and some realizations can only be reached through trial and error.
The 57th Venice Biennale is held until November 26, 2017.
