Venice Art Biennale Highlights & Summer Recommendations

After working so hard on the Ancient Wisdom exhibition, it’s been really nice to unfold like a hand fan into into summer adventures. This summer took me to Italy, New York, Bolinas, California and then the Bolinas of Alaska, a beautiful town of eagles and glaciers called Haines. I am so inspired by seeing so much art, nature and different ways to live.

First, Venice. Venice is improbably and impossibly beautiful.

When I first met Ken at 26, and in the first weeks of falling madly in love, he said, “I have been saving up for a trip to Europe during summer break and I would love for you to come with me.” He was a young professor, I was a young filmmaker, we were just starting out in life. I said “YES.”

Just as Ken and I arrived at St. Mark’s Square a couple of months later, they played the song from the 1966 French film that we had just seen and loved, “A Man and a Woman,” and we danced as the Venetian birds flew up at each step. That was the song we danced to at our wedding.

Then in 2012, when Ken was on sabbatical, and we did a long stay with our two young daughters Odessa and Blooma in that magical city of fairytales and impossibilities.

Then in June, Ken and I returned to celebrate our wedding anniversary…

and experience the Art Biennale.

This city captivates me like no other.

The sheer impossibility of it… this city primarily built in the 10th–15th centuries. We watched a short film on the “crazy engineering” that was used to create Venice that I recommend so you can also marvel at it all. Then add a layer of incredible art, just makes it not only improbably and impossibly beautiful but completely irresistible.

We were clocking 21,000 steps a day and absorbing as much art, pasta, and vistas as possible.

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Venice Biennale

The curator of the 61st Venice Biennale was the late Koyo Kouoh. She was the first African woman curator of the Biennale and tragically died of cancer a year before the Biennale opened. I was deeply moved to know that her exhibition In Minor Keys was brought to life through her team.

The highlights for me were some that were officially part of the Biennale and some outside.

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Helter Skelter Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince, brilliantly curated by Nancy Spector for the Prada Foundation

The potent conversation between the work of these two artists was like the unofficial American Pavillon. Curator Nancy Spector writes, “They are quintessentially American artists in subject and medium, literally enfolding objects and images from the empirical world into their works, subsuming them as readymades—Trojan horses, as it were, designed to disrupt established belief systems.” This powerful unofficial entry underscored how art can exist without gatekeepers.

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Seaworld Venice by Florentina Holziger for the Austrian Pavilion, curated by Nora-Swantje Almes

Experiencing Florentina’s work for the first time was arresting. Watching her climb up the rope at the top of each hour and swing from that bell showed both feminine power and the way women are tossed around in society, all at once. It was both haunting and mesmerizing to experience.

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"Lavatory Self-Portrait in the Flemish Style #12" by Nina Katchadourian

I have always loved the sense of humor of Nina’s series made with the creative constraint of only making art with objects only found while on an airplane. Great seeing them at the Biennale. Catharine Clark Gallery just announced a book on this series.

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Nick Cave: Two Points in Time at Once curated by Koyo Kouoh

Nick Cave’s sculptures were so striking throughout the Biennale.

The Only True Protest Is Beauty: Dries Foundation

Curated by Dries Van Noten with Geert Bruloot at Palazzo Pisani Moretta.

Inspired by the work of activist Phil Ochs, the title frames beauty not as a passive ideal, but as a potent catalyst for provocation and radical transformation. “Abandoning the classical dictate that beauty must merely please, it embraces philosopher Elaine Scarry’s claim that beauty adrenalizes the senses and renders life more vivid, animated, and worth living.” “This restores beauty as a language of life. Here, perception awakens, and arts and crafts reveal themselves as a radical act of encounter.” As a fan of Dries fashion, this one in the incredible Palazzo was so much beauty all in one eyefull.

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Still Joy: The Ukraine Pavillion

With a daughter named Odessa, and family from Ukraine, the title of this show in light of the war there felt defiant in the best way. Inside the Ukrainian Still Joy exhibition, there were elegant chandeliers made in the Venetian glass style, that as you got closer you realized were made …

from marshmallow candies by Dutch artist Simone Post. “She Knew She/It/They Would Melt.” Even in war, even in pain, there is still joy.

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How Many Angels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin? Nordic Countries Pavilion

I also made the same choice I did last summer, which I HIGHLY recommend, putting my phone into what I call “travel mode,” basically to only use my phone for maps, photos, payment and calls. No news, social or email. Nothing to take me out of the moment.

It only requires you to do a quick delete of those apps at the start of your trip and then re-instate after. Easy breezy and suddenly you are freed from the shackles of demands of attention, responses, and being in that third space of the web that removes you from the delicious experiences that travel presents to you, if you can just look up from your phone.

Here’s to ancient cities, art, pasta, travel mode, and opening your mind.

xo,

Tiffany

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When I travel, I feel like a mollusk and my suitcase is my shell. I have experimented with many different kinds over my lifetime and I have to say my most recent one, I highly recommend. I am a carry-on-only type of person. It’s super light, expandable and you step on it to contract it. (Let’s just say since I love fashion, I have stomped on the top to compress it down on several occasions.) They are a big investment but I usually have one for over two decades, so I think they are worth it—on your mollusk adventures, your suitcase is your home away from home.

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I write this waiting for Ken’s and my older daughter Odessa to come back home from Brooklyn to the nest tomorrow, and for some good family time together with Blooma and Ken coming up.

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Summer Recommendations

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Documentary: Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World

Ken and I just saw this documentary about the poet Mary Oliver. I’m so inspired by her relationship and her commitment to her work even though she didn’t find widespread recognization until later in her life.

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FEMME Art Fair in DC, August 27 to 30th

The FEMME Art Fair runs August 27-30 and is the only art fair that centers women and their work. The Guerrilla Girls will give a keynote and they will also be showing my film We Are Here about my Dendrofemonology sculpture and doing an online keynote & Q & A on Aug 27th. Will be a great event. There is a terrific podcast interview between Dr. Nancy O’Reilly from Women Connect4Good and Maggie O’Neill from Femme Art Fair you can listen to here. Get tickets to Femme Art here.

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David Best: Eyes and Ears at di Rosa Napa,
Aug 8 - Dec 6

“For more than five decades, David Best has transformed the overlooked and the everyday into exuberant works of art, finding beauty, humor, and humanity in discarded materials.”—Curator Twyla Ruby. Can’t wait to see this show at di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art / Napa opening this weekend. Learn more here.

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Judy Chicago: Revelations at Jewish Museum Amsterdam Through Aug 23

Judy Chicago is always an inspiration. This show curated by Judith Hoekstra is organized around a manuscript Chicago created in the early 1970s while working on her seminal work The Dinner Party. If you find yourself in Amsterdam this summer, be sure to check it out.

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Terri Friedman: Overmuch at Anthony Meier Gallery in Mill Valley, July 16-Sept 18

My friend Terri Friedman’s work is just gorgeous. Looking forward to seeing her new show in my hometown of Mill Valley at Anthony Meier Gallery.

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Amy Trachtenberg: Abstract Objects of Devotion and Andy Vogt: The Ringing in My Eyes at 500 Capp Street in SF, July 25-Oct 17

Looking forward to seeing two friends art shows, Amy Trachtenberg’s show and Andy Vogt’s new work at 500 Capp Street!

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Preorder Artificial Intimacy by Sherry Turkle

This new book by the brilliant Sherry Turkle couldn’t be more timely or important. Sherry coined this term “Artificial Intimacy” In the 80’s and has been prescient on so many issues around technology. We have known each other for 30 years and have had many discussions on the topic. I cannot wait to read her new book on this all. She and I will be in conversation about it in SF Oct 22nd. Details coming soon. Learn more about the book here.

Another amazing mind, Krista Tippett, has a great letter about AI and society that you can read here.

More feminist perspectives on all this technology seems like a necessary corrective.

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Art Makes Everything Better

Before I sign off, I leave you with some more beauty . . . here is a mural in San Francisco by Jane Kim, Full Bloom, curated and coordinated with art consultant Lynne Baer for a MidPen Housing affordable teacher housing development. You can see what it adds to the San Francisco landscape. To art!