Courtesy reinesnotebook.com
Less than a month before the opening of the 12th Havana Biennial, the Cuban Pavilion will open its doors at the 56th Venice Biennale.
This year’s pavilion marks the return of co-curators Jorge Fernández Torres—director of the Havana Biennial—and Giacomo Zaza, who co-curated the previous Cuban Pavilion in 2013. Working with the theme of El artista entre la individualidad y el context (The artist between individuality and context), the duo has assembled a roster of eight artists, including Grethell Rasúa, Luis Edgardo Gómez Armenteros, Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo, and Celia and Yunior (who are also finalists in the Cuban International Art Awards).
The four Cuban artists and artist teams will be joined by four international participants: Lida Abdul (Afghanistan), Giuseppe Stampone (Italy), Lin Yilin (China), and Moscow-based Olga Chernysheva.
Chernysheva is also among the 136 artists invited to participate by the Biennale’s visual director and curator, Okwui Enwezor.
The roster of invited artists also includes the duo Allora and Calzadilla; Ricardo Brey; Tania Bruguera; and Coco Fusco, who will debut a new single-channel video, La confesión. Bruguera’s participation is an open question, as she remains in Cuba to address ongoing legal issues.
Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates
Under the theme of “All the World’s Futures,” this year’s Biennale will take a more politicized turn, anchored by a marathon live reading of all three books of Das Kapital, directed by UK artist Isaac Julien.
The 56th Venice Biennale opens May 9th—almost a month earlier than usual, to coincide with the Expo Milano world fair in Milan—with previews starting May 6. It runs through November 22.
