Even more than dreams (as the title of this year\u2019s exhibition, The Milk of Dreams<\/em>, would imply), in the Giardini at least, the many forms, histories, and reverberations of war were on display. These exhibitions overwhelmingly looked backward, from the reimagining of women\u2019s vocals forgotten to time by Sonia Boyce (UK), through a folksy textile take on the fresco by Ma\u0142gorzata Mirga-Tas (Poland), a set of films reflecting on the Algerian war and independence by Zineb Sedira (France), and Maria Eichorn\u2019s continued excavation of the German pavilion\u2019s Nazi past, to Stan Douglas (Canada), whose photographic hybridization of the Arab Spring and the Occupy movements reinvigorated recent historic uprisings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A feeling of reflection seemed to resonate throughout the park, including in the central pavilion, where two of curator Cecelia Alemani\u2019s five \u201chistorical capsules\u201d were sited. At a contemporary art fair that prioritizes newness, these injections of traditional museological practice felt like a radical gesture, an admittedly odd sentiment given the broader setting of the fair, in the middle of a perfectly preserved Renaissance fantasyland. The capsules nonetheless stood out as a reminder to slow down and make connections with the past\u200a\u2014\u200ain particular with the contributions of our artistic foremothers, most of whom were underappreciated in their own times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Given the recent global regression into Cold War politics, Capsule I, The Witch\u2019s Cradle<\/em>, a showcase of historical avant-gardism, was particularly apropos. While certain elements of the Arsenale exhibition at times skewed to the essentializing in their brand of \u201cwoman-as-divine\u201d feminism, the works here demonstrated a feminism ahead of its time. Certainly oneiric and even spiritual at moments, rather than praising the mystical life-giving qualities or birthiness of the female body, these works, by the likes of Maya Deren, Claude Cahun, Leonora Carrington, and many other lesser-known names, seemed to be oriented toward death\u200a\u2014\u200amany in a literal sense, illustrating the decay of flesh as universal process. These Expressionist, Dada, and Surrealist works demonstrated the intellectual and emotional prowess of women artists working through and between global upheavals that both heroized and put into question the very concept of the nation-state. Placing the works in this kind of miniaturized global utopia (and yes, it is exclusionary, but what modernist utopia wasn\u2019t?), in which borders are fantastically malleable or even nonexistent, lends a new conceptual frame in which to consider them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It would seem that with each new iteration of the Biennale, the question of the nation-state arises afresh, both because of the global flows required of such a herculean undertaking and because it throws into high relief the arbitrariness with which state lines are drawn and just how easily they can be redrawn at the whim of another, more powerful state\u2019s ambivalence or refusal to recognize another\u2019s sovereignty. And I am not speaking exclusively of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict but also, for one, of questions of sovereignty in our own proverbial backyard. So, what does it mean to maintain this veritable adult theme park replete with maquettes of statehood in 2022? Well, on the other hand, nation-states and their borders, while culturally and digitally porous, have never been so physically armoured and militarized. It would seem that as conceptual borders fall away, an anxiety to reinforce physical ones ensues. The humbly tilted walls of Spain\u2019s pavilion, overlooked and seemingly dismissed as too pretentious or conceptual, might be best equipped to reimagine the relationship among states. The mere 10 percent shifting of walls conducted by artist Ignasi Aball\u00ed realigned the Spanish pavilion\u2019s interior to match its neighbours\u200a\u2014\u200aa gesture of internal changes as a means of aligning with external communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anxiety about growing disparities and deepening political cleavages was palpable throughout, perhaps not so dissimilar to those experienced by the artists in The Witch\u2019s Cradle<\/em>. The work of Marco Fusinato (Australia) epitomized the interminable sensory overload of our times through noise compositions and randomly generated imagery, Adina Pintilie\u2019s (Romania) multi-channel video installation quietly demonstrated the intimate and everyday resistances to systemic oppression, and Dumb Type\u2019s (Japan) brought us inside the surveillance and harvesting of our own metadata. Taking a more historical and material approach was Germany\u2019s Maria Eichhorn, who, in a nod to the institutional critique of her forebear Hans Haacke, exposed the very foundation on which the German pavilion was made\u200a\u2014\u200aa foundation that was not inherently fascist but became hospitable to the fatherland\u2019s aesthetic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m a little skeptical when publicly facing events are made feminist by the simple exclusion of men\u200a\u2014\u200ait feels easy, a superficial solution. But by placing anxiety about constant surveillance and the nation-state in dialogue with the mission statement of a women-dominated Biennale, the role of Woman is not as mystical magical body but as immanently subversive: a born saboteur to the designs of paternalistic, particularly fascist nation-states that depend on the essentializing of women\u2019s bodies in order to function ideologically. Although I\u2019m cautious about the curatorial conceit of centring the woman artist at a time when constructions of gender are increasingly fuzzy, the exhibitions in the Giardini were actually strengthened by it when paired with critiques and reconfigurations of another imaginary division: the nation-state.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/133DSC03927La-Culla-della-Stega\u00a9photoElaBialkowskaOKNOstudio.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/1DSC04061\u00a9photoElaBialkowskaOKNOstudio.jpg\")
Photos: Ela Bialkowska, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Biennale-Espagne_Ignasi-Aballi\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/106_CRL_Cadotte_Biennale-Espagne_Ignasi-Aballi_MRC140120220822.jpg\")
Correction<\/em>, exhibition view, Spanish Pavilion, 2022.
Photo: Marco Cappelletti<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Biennale-Allemagne_Maria-Eichhorn\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/106_CRL_Cadotte_Biennale-Allemagne_Maria-Eichhorn_MRC127820220822.jpg\")
Relocating a Structure<\/em>, exhibition view, German Pavilion, 2022.
Photo: Marco Cappelletti<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Biennale-Australie_Marco-Fusinato_MRC8483_Australia\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/106_CRL_Cadotte_Biennale-Australie_Marco-Fusinato_MRC8483_Australia20220822.jpg\")
DESASTRES<\/em>, exhibition view, Australian Pavilion, 2022.
Photo: Marco Cappelletti<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n