56. Biennale – Padiglione guatemalteco
Il progetto Sweet Death rappresenta il Guatemala alla 56. Biennale di Venezia.
Comunicato stampa
The theme of the exhibition, Sweet Death, inspired by the book of Thomas Mann, the film of Visconti, the opera by Britten, mainly deals with the concept of "death-finitude" understood as decline and loss of values in contemporary society, but all expressed through the language of joy and color, using a gentle approach and cuteness.Exemplifying in this regard is the image offered by the cemetery in Chichicastenango, in Guatemala, where the tombs are colorful, children are playing in the niches, the young people kiss one each other and the elderly laugh among the tombstones. Directly from Maya rituals, mourning retains its colors: white graves for fathers, for mothers turquoise, blue for children, yellow for grandparents.In this exhibition Guatemalan and international artists will discuss the theme of death reliving a situation similar to that of Gustav von Aschenbach, aged but fascinated by the beauty of young Tadzio and powdered by a trick for this caricature; similarly the Arts, today "senile" and dying, will attempt an artificial rejuvenation. According to Gino de Dominicis in fact Sumerian art - in our case that Maya- was "young" while his contemporary "old", through a meter essentially chronological. Venice thus becomes the perfect scenography for this landscape of the soul, the admixture of Rococo taste, carnival and festive, fused together with a solemn sense of melodrama.
The pursuit of a Beauty, evoked by contradictory images and often showy, is like the rouge, a palliative grotesque and visible, unable to hide the death. And that trick is nothing but the colorful chromaticism of the guatemalan tombs, a way to exorcise the end of man and humanize the transition. Plus all the exposure will bring an easter egg into every work, a secret and accessible track only behind reflection, yet another mask designed to hide an alternate reality.
In a game of overlapping roles, the result of a playful and osmotic relationship, Italian artists will give the Guatemalan Mayan touches and pushes coloristic, unlike Guatemala will offer examples of "diluted "art and " influenced" by colonialism.It will then present a multicolored artistic polygamy and, without borders, with tasty sets and combinations between the sacred and the profane. Alongside the exhibitors will figure invited collaborators, artists themselves, similar to the fifteenth workers, or personifications of an all-round trade, joined together in the great fresco of life. Commissioner: Daniele Radini Tedeschi
Curators: Carlo Marraffa, Stefania Pieralice, Elsie Wunderlich
Deputy curator: Luciano Carini, Simone Pieralice
Special event: May 8, 3.30pm, vernissage
Artists:
Adriana Montalto Elmar René Rojas Paolo Schmidlin Mónica Serra Elsie Wunderlich Collettivo La Grande Bouffe
