Aage Gaup / Hungary

The 59th International Art Exhibition of Venice Biennale, titled The Milk of Dreams, will open to the public from Saturday April 23 to Sunday November 27, 2022, at the Giardini and the Arsenale; it will be curated by Cecilia Alemani and organized by La Biennale di Venezia chaired by Roberto Cicutto. The Pre-opening will take place on April 20, 21 and 22; the Awards Ceremony and Inauguration will be held on April 23, 2022.

Last year, La Biennale di Venezia launched a plan to reconsider all of its activities in light of recognized and consolidated principles of environmental sustainability. For the year 2022, the goal is to extend the achievement of “carbon neutrality” certification, which was obtained in 2021 for the 78th Venice International Film Festival, to all of La Biennale’s scheduled activities, which include the 59th International Art Exhibition, the Theatre, Music and Dance Festivals and the 79th Venice International Film Festival.

Ambra Castagnetti / Italy

Andro Eradze / Georgia

Cosima Von Bonin / Kenya

Akosua Adoma Owusu / USA

Elaine Cameron-Weir / Canada

Dora Budor / Croatia

THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION

The Exhibition unfolds in the Central Pavilion of the Giardini, and in the Corderie, Artiglierie, and the outdoor spaces of the Gaggiandre and Giardino delle Vergini at the Arsenale complex. The Milk of Dreams includes 213 artists from 58 countries. More than 180 of these artists have never had their work in the International Art Exhibition until now. For the first time in its 127-year history, the Biennale will include a majority of women and gender non-conforming artists

The exhibition features contemporary works and 80 new projects conceived specifically for the Biennale Arte, presented in dialogue with several historic works.

Diego Marcon / Italy

Elisa Giardina Papa / Italy

Alexandra Pirici / Romania

Elle Pérez / USA

Eglė Budvytytė, in Collaboration with Marija Olšauskaitė and Julija Steponaitytė / Lithuania

Felipe Baeza / Mexico

Magdalene Odundo / Kenya

“The Milk of Dreams takes its title from a book by Leonora Carrington (1917–2011),” Cecilia Alemani stated, “in which the Surrealist artist describes a magical world where life is constantly re-envisioned through the prism of the imagination. It is a world where everyone can change, be transformed, become something or someone else. The Exhibition The Milk of Dreams takes Leonora Carrington’s otherworldly creatures, along with other figures of transformation, as companions on an imaginary journey through the metamorphoses of bodies and definitions of the human.”

Hannah Levy / USA

Marianna Simnett / UK

Julia Phillips / Germany

Nan Goldin / USA

Lenora De Barros / Brazil

Thao Nguyen Phan / Vietnam

Pavlo Makov / Ukraine

“This Exhibition is grounded in many conversations with artists held in the last few years. The questions that kept emerging from these dialogues seem to capture this moment in history when the very survival of the species is threatened, but also to sum up many other inquiries that pervade the sciences, arts, and myths of our time. How is the definition of the human changing? What constitutes life, and what differentiates plant and animal, human and non-human? What are our responsibilities towards the planet, other people, and other life forms? And what would life look like without us”

“These are some of the guiding questions for this edition of the Biennale Arte, which focuses on three thematic areas in particular: the representation of bodies and their metamorphoses; the relationship between individuals and technologies; the connection between bodies and the Earth.”

Janis Rafa / Greece

Simnikiwe Buhlungu / South Africa

Robert Grosvenor / USA

Sidsel Meineche Hansen / Denmark

Tetsumi Kudo / Japan

Sonia Delaunay / Ukraine – France

“The Milk of Dreams was conceived and organized in a period of enormous instability and uncertainty, since its development coincided with the outbreak and spread of the Covid pandemic. La Biennale di Venezia was forced to postpone this edition by one year, an event that had only occurred during the two World Wars since 1895. So the very fact that this exhibition can open is somewhat extraordinary: its inauguration is not exactly the symbol of a return to normal life, but rather the outcome of a collective effort that seems almost miraculous. During these endless months in front of the screen, I have pondered the question of what role the International Art Exhibition should play at this historical juncture, and the simplest, most sincere answer I could find is that the Biennale sums up all the things we have so sorely missed in the last two years: the freedom to meet people from all over the world, the possibility of travel, the joy of spending time together, the practice of difference, translation, incomprehension, and communion.”

“The Milk of Dreams is not an exhibition about the pandemic, but it inevitably registers the upheavals of our era. In times like this, as the history of La Biennale di Venezia clearly shows, art and artists can help us imagine new modes of coexistence and infinite new possibilities of transformation.”

–Cecilia Alemani, curator

Venice Biennale / 59th Edition 2022
The Milk of Dreams
April 23 – November 11, 2022 / Venice, Italy
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