Each workshop at La Pietà and San Donà has been inspired by Martin Puryear’s artworks and processes. Students have responded to the artist’s use of symbolism, his allusion to important civic issues, and his investigation of identity, to name a few themes. The lessons have explored a multitude of ideas relating to Puryear’s sculptures on view at the Biennale, while allowing students to learn about different mediums and cultivate their own artistic voice.

The students at La Pietà have visited the Biennale and spent time looking at and sketching Martin’s work. I think this experience was especially important for them, in that they were able to make meaning of the work in real time, and feel a connection between their community, the Giardini site, and the artist himself. Aya, a young girl at the charity, has expressed a deepened interest in Martin Puryear since that visit. The students at both charities are at varied levels in their artmaking, but I believe that they are beginning to create artworks that they care for, and are proud of.

I have deeply enjoyed seeing the students immerse themselves in artmaking. In the summer heat during a presumed school break, it can be difficult to have the class settle into the workshops. But in some moments, there is solace in the art processes—I remember during a printmaking lesson I noticed that the class seemed to slow down, quietly preparing their plates and pulling prints. I cherish those moments of natural quietude in the classroom, because it indicates that the students are immersed in their artworks, briefly practicing an intensity that matches any esteemed artist at work.

In my experience at the pavilion, the most memorable interactions I’ve had have been brief conversations, often surrounding a single piece of Martin’s.

One interaction in particular stands out for me. It happened just this week, with Nanase and I guarding rooms one and two in the pavilion.

A woman and her son approached us rather suddenly, eager to talk about the work in room two. This was a surprise to us; visitors with this level of urgency only appear once or twice a day. She began to speak; it was clear that she was not from the United States initially, both by her accent and the first few phrases she muttered. “You know,” she said, “we weren’t really into this pavilion initially. We saw it was the United States, and then came into this room and saw all of these ‘Western’ motifs, what with the wagon and the skull, and thought it was a bit cliche. But then we kept looking and—”

She goes on to mention the close-looking and resulting conversation she had with her son, and how they both got to the sculpture’s uncanniness without any help (thus far) from the exhibition’s written material. Nanase and I were both incredibly impressed, both by their attentiveness and their original take — for as long as I have been working and looking within room two, not once have I begun to relate the two works in it (Hibernian Testosterone and New Voortrekker) to one another, or consider them both as distinctly “Western” objects.

Nanase wasn’t as fazed; she said that in her experience, people have compared Hibernian Testosterone to works by Georgia O’Keefe before. But this entry-point to this particular conversation surrounding these two works and the exhibition at large got me thinking about Martin Puryear: Liberty/Libertà from an entirely new vantage point.

What does it mean, to intuit these works as “Western?” What American tropes do we associate with that phrase, and in what specific ways — individually and mutually — do these works challenge these tropes? These are questions that have, over the past few days, shifted the way I think and discuss and teach about the works in room two. I’m thoroughly grateful for this particular conversation, and what came from it.

Recently, I was on a shift in the second gallery when a woman and her teenage son came up to Haley and I and politely asked if we were American. I had initially expected her to inquire about our roles as interns, how we ended up at the Biennale, or perhaps something about the process of Puryear being selected to represent the U.S.—questions that come up with relative frequency during our time in the gallery. However, when we responded that we were indeed American, she gestured to the pieces in the room—Hibernian Testosterone and New Voortrekker—and asked us, “As Americans, what do you think of these works? Because to me, they feel so American.” Her accent and tone of an outsider’s curiosity suggested she was European, though I never got the chance to ask. I recalled her family entering the Pavilion a good deal earlier, perhaps twenty minutes or so, and it seemed as if they had seen the full exhibition and turned back around, a nagging concern keeping them from leaving the pieces.

Both of us faltered for a moment as she continued to clarify. “We first came into this pavilion thinking, ‘oh, United States…this whole Wild West imagery feels a bit cliche…’ but we’re not quite sure…does it feel different to you guys as Americans?” It was a striking question, one that I’d never truly considered before. Yet it is one that makes perfect sense to ask, especially in the context of the Biennale’s international audience. The two works indeed incite questions about the trope of the “wild west,” a concern that is somewhat alluded to in the text for New Voortrekker but not in the text for Hibernian Testosterone. Moreover, I had been rarely brought to consider the relationship between the two works in that room, and how they might appear to a visitor, especially following the staunch and monochromatic presence of Big Phrygian in the first gallery. What does it mean to engage with these works as a non-American? The brilliant craftsmanship of these works is often self-effacing, and here it makes sense that, especially as a non-American, their first instinct upon viewing these pieces was to recall Americana—tropes which feel increasingly troubled and far less flippant in the climate of America today (a skepticism which is fully in-line with both the sentiments of the visitors and the artist himself). Yet the two visitors had evidently caught on to something uncanny, something not quite right about their initial appearance, consequently feeling the need to vocalize their musings with us.

I began speaking a bit about how some visitors have drawn connections between Hibernian  Testosterone and the New Mexico paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, but quickly realized that the question we were all struggling to decode had no clear answer. What was fascinating, too, was that the woman possessed one of the brochures but had not yet read any of the text. That this line of questioning emerged from just visual engagement with the objects (and presumably the tombstone labels) was fascinating to us, and it’s prompted me to consider more critically how the American Pavilion presents itself to non-Americans, and what my own relationship to “American-ness” constitutes.

My interactions with visitors at the pavilion have mostly been elliptical moments of engagement. Biennale-goers will frequently ask specific questions about the artist’s material, sometimes about a sculpture’s source of inspiration. On a quiet Friday however, I was approached by an elderly woman named Carol, who asked if I could give her a full tour of Martin Puryear: Liberty/Libertà. She and her husband, Ken, have been making visits to the Biennale for over ten years and with every trip, make a point to ask the gallery attendants for a walk-through, explaining that it had always been a more fruitful and pleasurable way for her to learn, as opposed to reading the brochure alone.

It was humbling to hear that these informal conversations around artworks with gallery guides had significantly shaped her experiences in the Giardini. Together, we looked closely at A Column for Sally Hemings, which caught both Carol’s and Ken’s attention. They had recently moved to Virginia, and were drawn to the sculpture’s evocation of the Jeffersonian architecture and racialized histories that extend back to Monticello. One of the driving questions was around material ephemerality—while the rusted shackle alluded to the past, the lifespan of the fluted wooden column spoke to real-time degradation and change. What is the significance of an artist choosing to use a material as vulnerable as wood?

As we moved on to conclude with Tabernacle, I realized that the artist himself was in the gallery, visiting the space in preparation for the next day’s private tour. Ken was able to thank Martin Puryear and ask him questions about the exhibition, while Carol turned to me and whispered, “we are curious at any age!” It all seemed serendipitous for the couple—they were eager to learn, and to thank the artist for creating the kind of artworks that Carol loved for being “layered with meaning”. After looking at Puryear’s sculpture with Carol and Ken, I meditated on the idea that a love of learning is perhaps one of the greatest gifts that artists can impart to their audiences.

My favorite artmaking experience so far has hands-down been the printmaking lesson at La Pietá. The tactile quality of that lesson, I believe, kept the kids and the moms incredibly engaged throughout the entire hour and a half. Each part of the lesson — the symbol-making, the cutting and pasting, the printing itself — was spaced out evenly and the projects were different enough that not one person ever got bored or tired of what they were doing.

More specifically, my favorite experience within the printmaking lesson was being able to help Cristian, a young boy in one of the groups at La Pietá. Often times, Cristian works one-on-one with his mother. Around halfway through lessons done in this way, however, he tends to get frustrated. It’s difficult for his mother to produce her own work while also handling him. She begins the lesson with the intention of doing so, but Cristian often demands attention. Even still, her commitment to her work leaves him without a constant helper or guide, which leaves him incapacitated after a few minutes of free time.

This day, I was able to help Cristian one-on-one through every step of the lesson. With my conversational grasp of the language, I was able to utter basic commands that he understood and reacted to with a physical action. I was able to see the excitement in his eyes as he completed a task within the lesson. And I was able to see both his and his mother’s joy at producing a beautiful, well-crafted final print.

This particular experience in the classroom was thrilling. It made me want to return to La Pietá, day after day, and bring lessons to these mothers and children. It is something I will think back on for much time to come.

The children and the mothers consistently awe and impress me with their innovative ideas and open minds. The printmaking lesson at La Pietà in particular was a fruitful day for both the mothers and the children. The ways in which they combined their individual shapes led to results that strongly recalled the forms and motifs characteristic of Martin’s works—clear contours, textural shifts from detailed crenellations to sweeping curves, and allusions that oscillate between familiar and abstract forms. The children’s faces showed wonder as they pulled their first prints, they eagerly desired to produce more versions in different colors and inking patterns.

Mohammed created a two-tone print of his own volition, carefully inking one side of his form white and the other blue, managing to maintain a clean boundary between the two colors without letting them blend into one another. It was fascinating to see how everyone took to the materials and interpreted the project on their own, and we had several conversations back and forth about what objects or forms their combined symbols resembled. The thrill and satisfaction that emerged as students progressed through the steps of the printing process were extremely rewarding to watch, and I was intrigued by how effective of an exercise in tactility it also ended up being through processes of cutting, pasting, inking, pressing, peeling, and so on. Cristian, one of the toddlers, expressed pure wonder in seeing his prints come to life, and his work actually reminded me a lot of the geometric forms and arrangements of Russian Constructivist works. The children and mothers consistently surprise me with how they innovate with the materials presented to them, often times without even being prompted. It is always exciting to ask them about the technical and creative processes they used to create their final products, and they always seem eager to discuss and bounce ideas back and forth.

Tabernacle rests at the coda of “Liberty/Libertà.” The steel crown and visor of the six-foot sculpture is derived from a Civil War-era forage cap, worn by Union and Confederate foot soldiers. A gridded exterior draws the contour of the hat’s form, from which a plain black canvas is suspended. Its interior is lined with a floral-patterned fabric from Braquenié, a historic French textile house. Biennale-goers peer into the work through a circular glass window, adorned with mullions that form crosshairs at the center. Inside the cap, a wooden replica of a siege mortar sits on an incline, bearing a shiny mirrored globe, akin to a cannonball.

One visitor pointed out that the interior of the sculpture resembled the anatomy of an eye—the plush floral textile an outer tissue, the glossy brown face of the cannon a chocolate iris, and the reflective ball a glinting pupil. Viewers lean in and see themselves, not unlike the ways that we catch our likeness in a person’s eyes. The viewer then is perhaps not just implicated, but cast in an intimate position of surveillance. What is the significance of this brown iris in a dark space? Whose eyes are we looking into, and who looks back at us?

In the exhibition catalogue essay “Martin Puryear Liberty Libertà,” curator Brooke Kamin Rapaport writes, “Tabernacle is Puryear’s meditation on American gun violence, so often enabled through something resembling religious zealotry.” In the United States, we have seen an alarming progression of flashpoints that pivot around issues of gun control, police brutality, and the malign gaze that falls pointedly on young black men—racialized acts of violence spread across our country like a cancer. The shooting of Trayvon Martin at the hands of George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, drew people’s attention to police shootings of unarmed black men and engendered a resilient cry that told us, Black Lives Matter.

Martin Puryear is a sculptor who thinks deeply about how the meaning of everyday objects evolve in historical and contemporary culture. Headwear is an ongoing source of inspiration for the artist, and the three hat-sculptures at the pavilion are encoded with notions of freedom and emancipation. Tabernacle’s black cloth sags slightly, punctuated by two holes like a beaten-up garment. When aligned, the viewer is simultaneously shrouded by a cavernous niche and positioned vulnerably at a target point. While its reference to a Civil War-era hat reminds us that we are mired to a violent foundation of white supremacy, the lived-in appearance of the cloth and its tilted canopy brings a contemporary kind of headgear to mind: the hoodie. If the gaping black shell were to function like a hood, we are implicated as both the wearer, or victim, and viewer.

Transcript of the 911 call made by Zimmerman:

Dispatcher: ‘‘Did you see what he [Trayvon Martin] was wearing?”

Zimmerman: ‘‘Yeah. A dark hoodie, like a gray hoodie.”

The hooded sweatshirt has become a pop political object that was most prominent in the ’80s, when it became a streetwear staple for B-boys, graffiti artists, and Thrasher-clad skaters.^[1] In the following years, when hip hop culture was predominantly led by African Americans, it was manipulated into a staple of the criminal class and used as a tool for racial profiling. In the wake of Trayvon Martin’s death, its meaning evolved once again, as protestors pulled on hoodies as acts of solidarity, organizing “Million Hoodie” marches and snapping photos with the hashtag, #IAmTrayvon. While the basic hoodie claims utilitarian function and risks stylish individuality, the political hoodie gives up identity to signal alliance.

I can only wonder if Puryear had considered the imagery of a hoodie while constructing Tabernacle. If it were a hood, the piece might be asking us, who has the freedom to wear one without question?

^[1]Patterson, Troy. “The Politics of the Hoodie.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 2 Mar. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/magazine/the-politics-of-the-hoodie.html.

Big Phrygian (2010–2014) was not—at least not initially—a work I was particularly drawn to writing about. Puryear’s larger, multi-part works in the United States Pavilion at this summer’s Venice Biennale sprung more immediately to my mind. As I stood in the entryway to the pavilion earlier today, however, the sculpture drew me in.

The entryway to the pavilion is fairly nondescript, particularly in Puryear’s Liberty/Libertà, as it’s situated behind the expansive Swallowed Sun (Monstrance and Volute) (2019). Still, the entryway to the pavilion quickly gives way to a bright room lit indirectly by a partially-covered skylight. It is decorated sparsely, but not underwhelmingly; Big Phrygian sits at its center. A brief wall text citing the exhibition’s sponsors rests on an opposite wall.

During my shifts at the pavilion, I’m more often than not in this first room. On most of my work days, you can find me at the entryway, counting visitors as they enter the space and commanding the occasional “non toccare, per favore.” It’s a job that requires attention, surely. First and foremost, attention to the materiality of the work for security’s sake. But this job has also provided me the time and space to be attentive to the works’ materiality as connected to its underlying creative meaning.

One tends to bleed into the other, too. Why exactly do people have a more intense desire to touch Big Phrygian than they do any other work? Maybe it’s the work’s command of the room? But what exactly—what physical features of the work—makes it so commanding?

Naturally, I don’t know the answer to this question. Even still, I consider some options. Maybe it’s Big Phrygian’s stained color, which is vivid and slightly splotched when reflecting light. Or maybe it’s the texture of the wood itself, which is consistently thatched with a subtlety I’ve never seen (but then again, maybe I’ve just never looked at wood for this long).

I wonder if people think about the breaks in the wood’s natural grain, the places where it looks like two individual panels combine. Do visitors consider the fact that the panels, when morphed and melded, might imply that the sculpture is hollow? Do they reach out for a tap to confirm or deny their suspicions?

These streams of consciousness wouldn’t flow without this job. While I did study art history throughout college, it wasn’t my major, and I therefore didn’t spend an extensive amount of time visually analyzing. I was a cultural studies major, and that method of inquiry—the close reading, rather than close looking—was where I was comfortable first and foremost.

So this experience is unique for me. It allows me to exercise this skill I didn’t fully know I had, and in turn give Martin’s works the attention commensurate with the attention that went into making them in the first place.

The values gathered from my time at the U.S. Pavilion have transferred to my teaching and my time living in Venice as well. Attuning myself to detail has allowed for more fruitful discussion with students in classes, and more insightful observations regarding their work. It has also saved me from a number of wrong turns in a city famous for its lack of navigability. My time spent with the deceptively comprehensible Big Phrygian has allowed me to see things I would not have seen otherwise; for this, I’m grateful.

Much of my shifts take place in the first two galleries, where I often observe visitors’ first reactions upon encountering Puryear’s work after Swallowed Sun. While many visitors are fascinated by the thoughtful craftwork reflected in Big Phrygian, or ask about its title and meaning, others sometimes roll their eyes or breeze past it, politely declining offers for the brochure. Many take photographs of it and touch the piece, often casually brushing their fingers across the surface or lightly knocking it and breezing away after our stern warnings. Some joke around about what they perceive it to be (gestures and giggles are often coupled with references to Smurf hats or phallic imagery).

Needless to say, there exists some quality about the work that tends to elicit rather distinct reactions and leaves people curious about its tactile quality, despite the unwritten expectation of no touching that undergirds all art museums.

After responding to one woman’s question about the piece, she leaned in and said, “to be honest, I really hated this work when I walked into the room. But now that you’ve explained it to me, it’s so much better.” The difficulty of grasping Puryear’s abstraction, however, transforms into a different sort of experience for many viewers as they enter the second gallery.

Hibernian Testosterone is arguably the most popular work to not only take pictures of, but also to take pictures with. I have watched countless visitors of all ages, particularly men, pose for photographs or take selfies underneath the piece. I am often asked if it is “real”, to which I respond by explaining that it is painted aluminum, but visitors simply nod and carry on after hearing that answer, not asking for more elaboration on the meaning or the title in the way that people often do with works like Big Phrygian, New Voortrekker, and A Column for Sally Hemings. Some simply stand erect directly underneath the piece, others put their palms next to their head, mimicking the deer’s antlers, jokingly “dab” or strike a silly pose.

While some people certainly do read the brochure text, there is something curious and even ironic about the way in which people are drawn to the piece, particularly with regards to the ideas behind the sculpture around masculinity and power. Being that the work operates as a critique of the self-destructive nature of the excesses of masculine energy and performance, it is interesting that the manner with which people engage with the work often invokes a relational aesthetics of museum-going that sets it apart from the other works in the collection. Visitors pose with the object in a performative fashion, relating themselves to the work and the camera in a triumphant or whimsical manner.

On the surface, it makes sense that Hibernian Testosterone would serve as an alluring photo-op. Its location in the gallery allows for a visitor to easily stand underneath it, and its figurative appearance renders it more accessible than the more heavily abstract and confrontational nature of Big Phrygian and the latter’s imposing placement in the center of the first room. The high placement of the piece on the wall clearly emulates the presentation of a hunter’s bounty. Yet instead of a cavernous wood cabin or fire-lit den, it is in an immaculate white cube gallery, a space that creates a veneer of neutrality that precisely obscures the forms of power that dominate the politics of viewing in the museum. This, coupled with the fact that the creature has gone extinct not as a result of human interventions such as hunting, but rather of its own accord, through an overabundance of masculine prowess, creates a rather interesting dynamic between the spectator and the object, hunter and hunted. The presentation of the work continues in the vein of masculine self-aggrandization, but who is being celebrated in this moment? The creature dead as a result of its own evolution, or the artist who has not killed, but rather crafted this object? Neither seems to fit quite right. The viewers are thus implicated in this complex interaction, wherein multiple layers of performance, irony, and truth oscillate between visibility and invisibility. The excessively large antlers are uncanny and not immediately recognizable, depending on one’s vantage point. Such experiences are common in Puryear’s works, which quietly ask the viewer to pause and question what they perceive in front of them—the wheels on the car of New Voortrekker which are not quite round, the patchy application of white paint on Column which gives away its materiality, or the flowery, domestic interior that seems at odds with the armored exterior of Tabernacle.

The work does, however, almost manifest as a sort of ironic performance on the behalf of the artist himself, a twisted presentation of the elegance of his craft. Visitors are perhaps partially allured by the creature for the same reasons that led to its demise. Part of this knowledge is coded. This symbolism is largely accessed through interacting with the accessories of the gallery space—the brochure and the interns nearby. While people often marvel at the detail and skill visible in Big Phrygian and New Voortrekker, the main point of fascination vocalized by many visitors is whether or not the sculpture is “real,” without necessarily demonstrating awe at the precision and accuracy of his material representation. I wonder how people might perceive the work differently if it were indeed a “real” skeleton of a deer—a readymade whose existence would seem utterly counter to Puryear’s practice.

As we are now going into our third week at the Pavilion, my relationship with Martin Puryear’s work is rapidly growing. Each hour I spend aiding visitors to interpret these works, as well as guarding them from any potential harm, I find myself either becoming more comfortable or more disturbed by the pieces that sit inside the United States Pavilion. As there are only four of us on duty at a time, and five rooms to attend to, we are often attending to two rooms at a time. When I am assigned to attend both room 2 and room 3, I find myself positioned closer to room 3, in which sits A Column For Sally Hemings. Historically, this piece is much more familiar to me, given my Southern upbringing in Virginia and my own family’s history of slavery.

A Column For Sally Hemings sits in the dead center of the rotunda in the Pavilion, directly under the oculus. The rotunda holds four smaller closets for staff use and has one window, one door leading to the outside, and two passageways allowing visitors to pass from one side of the building to the other. She, and with this pronoun I reference the piece, stands firmly in between the room that houses Hibernian Testosterone and New Voortrekker and the room that houses Cloister-Redoubt or Cloistered Doubt?. She challenges visitors as they enter the room. They have either the option to try to ignore her as they pass through, despite her height above them, or to size her up as she stands, walk around her and struggle in their decision to pass judgement on her. The room with A Column For Sally Hemings is perhaps my favorite to stand guard in, not only because I value so much the history and power of the piece, but because I take great amusement in watching the reactions of those who come across it. She stands tall in the rotunda, her white painted wood column mimicking the doric columns just outside the door she faces. Her “head,” shackled and rusted, renders the column useless as it penetrates the top of the support base, making it appear as though it is folding in under the weight. Perhaps it is, perhaps it should fold.

Throughout my time in the Pavilion there seem to have been very few people who are aware of the history of Sally Hemings and can come to be fully confident in their understanding of the work. I am not surprised to find this to be the case when I am interacting with non-American visitors about this piece. There was one German woman who took the time to look up who Sally Hemings was on her phone and as she read the history her eyes widened and she looked up from her phone and gasped, quickly calling to her companions to tell them about who she was. She was shocked. I was called over to answer some clarifying questions and it was quite a moment to watch the expression on her face change as she came to her own conclusions about why this piece is in this space. On one occasion, as I stood outside of the Pavilion taking surveys, I had the opportunity to overhear a mother telling her three young daughters who Sally Hemings was and the power structures that existed not only in her enslavement but in her relation to Thomas Jefferson as a mother to his children.

I believe that Puryear was successful in his creation and placement of A Column For Sally Hemings. In the Pavilion she is not ignored. She stands firm and strong and powerful, taking up and commanding space in a very powerful space that models the one that actively contributed to the oppression and suppression of the real Sally Hemings. No matter what people do, they cannot ignore her presence in the United States Pavilion. They are left wondering who she is as they read the wall label, and, when they discover the truth, they are instantly aware of the piece. They walk back around her, and address her from the front, aware of not only who she was, but what she is and what she represents.

A Hasty and Unsolicited Take on an Arbitrary Smattering of Collateral Exhibitions at the 2019 Venice Biennale by JP Peralta

Being in Venice during the Biennale Arte 2019 was one of the most unique experiences of my life. You can’t go anywhere in the city without stumbling into a church that’s been converted into a buzzing sound installation, or a vacated palace that is now home to a nest of oversized meerkats made from candy-apple red plastic. No matter where you go, art is in front of you and behind you and you’re getting yelled at for standing on it. That sort of constant immersion is transportive in the best ways. You see poetry in the overgrown plants. All the crumbling plaster on the walls becomes sculpture.  Each time someone slips on the marble-topped stairs becomes a performance piece. I looked at, listened to, and at times ran my fingers through more art than you could cram into a cruise ship and crash into the city. I have thus far had no platform to share my unasked-for opinions on some of the fine work at the world’s greatest art exhibition, but the time has come. What follows is the least-anticipated piece to ever be written about any Biennale: A Hasty and Unsolicited Take on an Arbitrary Smattering of Collateral Exhibitions at the 2019 Venice Biennale by JP Peralta.

I want to begin with a disclaimer. I am not an art critic. I am not even a journalist at all. I am a young Clevelander with a bachelor’s in Art History working in museum education who has way more opinions than he has any right to have, a priceless opportunity in a beautiful city, and Microsoft Word. To contextualize my art-viewing experience in Venice, you should know that I had two full days off each week to go around the city and see the exhibitions. One of those days was Monday, when a lot of exhibitions are closed. I also had about six hours a week that I was free to go about Venice and see whatever shows I could. I was not able to see everything the Biennale had to offer and with so little time and so much to see, I did not spend nearly as much time in each exhibition as it deserved. Good art writers will spend hours poring over every detail in every room of an exhibition. I spent about one hour in each show on average. Luckily, I have never claimed to be a good art writer. I just have Microsoft Word, remember? Anyway, let’s start with my favorite part of any travel experience: the lowlights.

1. Förg in Venice at Palazzo Contarini Polignac

“Förg in Venice” was the result of a collaboration between the Dallas Museum of Art and Günther Förg’s Estate. The works on paper and small sculptures that constituted the show were stunning on their own. Förg’s unearthly command of line and color are on full view in this retrospective exhibition. Pieces like Untitled (2007) are striking examples of exploratory, contemporary painting. His petal-like blotches of paint adhere to a discernible pattern of brushwork, but their seemingly-random placement on the canvas feels more like Förg has eliminated the barrier between thinking and making, leaving the viewer with an unaltered view into pure consciousness. Each painting on its own was an absolute joy to look at, I just found it hard to stay looking at any of them. The reason being that the intimate, domestic setting of Palazzo Contarini Polignac felt completely inappropriate for the work it housed. I found it difficult to even find some of Förg’s paintings because they had been completely swallowed-up by the space. The architectural decoration, ornate furniture, and expansive canal views in this fifteenth-century palace completely stole the show, which left me conflicted. You would think I’d just be glad to see great art in a beautiful space, but I saw a lot of that exact combination in Venice and nowhere else did I have this problem. It was a shame, and maybe not a pure “lowlight,” but I was disappointed, at least.

2. Renata Morales and Marina Abramović at Ca’Rezzonico

Let me start by saying that I feel bad for lumping Renata Morales’s immersive project Invasor (2019) in with the lowlights. I quite enjoyed both rooms of her installation. The junkyard stacks of gold-plated tires peppered with dinosaur figures and beheaded cherubs were refreshingly sardonic. The chunks of concrete piled into the center of the second room did feel like the rubble of a freshly-desiccated shrine, where the stone souls of girls were ascending from the dust like phantoms. Invasor was one of the few projects at the Biennale that gave me a true sense of discovery, and I loved that. My issue with this show came quite unexpectedly with the work of Marina Abramović. Now, I am a big fan of Abramović’s. The work she has done for art and for performance is peerless. She is one of the few geniuses of our time, so my expectations for her show in Venice were high. Perhaps too high, even. Her work, titled Rising (2019), was a tremendous disappointment.

To start, the VR was not good. Spotty motion tracking and flashing indicators on the screen ripped me out of whatever little immersion I scrounged to find. My in-game hand kept spazzing out, and at one point it was 30 yards away from the rest of my body, spinning around an invisible point in space, which I personally didn’t find very realistic. When I saw the in-game avatar for Abramović, trapped in a tank of water, instead of feeling a deep sense of dread as she seems to have intended, I had to stifle a laugh. Her avatar looked like a Madame Tussaud’s model that got left in the backseat of a hot car at a Best Buy, while some intern bought the VR headsets. I didn’t understand what my role in the artwork was at all, and the message I came away with was, “sea levels are rising. We have to care for the planet.” Which, as important and true of a message as that is, it was ineffective among the other, more compelling artworks about climate change at this year’s Biennale, such as Sun and Sea: Marina (2019) at the Lithuanian Pavilion. I was immensely disappointed with Rising, but between the two of us, Abramović has already made history with her countless, ground-breaking performances, while I have wasted enough of my life doing VR that I have a lot to compare this work to. So I think she still comes out on top.

But enough of the lowlights! I think it’s time to look at some of my favorite shows:

3. La Pelle at Palazzo Grassi

At an art event where so many exhibitions draw visitors with immersive, sensory installations, I did not have especially high hopes for a show exclusively made up of paintings. But I already had a ticket from a prior visit to the partner show in Punta Della Dogana’s Luogo e Segni (the best value ticket in the city), so I figured I would be losing money if I skipped La Pelle. But I was dead wrong. If I had skipped La Pelle, I would have been losing much more than money; I would have been robbing myself of one of the most visually arresting and engrossing shows I’ve ever been to. La Pelle is a retrospective exhibition of work by Belgian painter Luc Tuymans. Tuymans’s practice is defined by an at-times unwilling collaboration between painting and photography, in which he will paint and thus monumentalize photos that we might not otherwise give a second thought. Me (2011), for instance, is based on a photo that looks like it was accidentally taken with an idling webcam. Other paintings might be based on a polaroid but capture the visual corruption that many images experience as they are banished from real life onto VHS tapes, then blasted on the screen of CTR TV, and finally photographed off the CTR screen with a cheap polaroid. Tuyman’s paintings surround themselves with the same unnerving mystique as found footage videos. The stoic architecture of Palazzo Grassi is even a fabulous backdrop for the cold effect of Tuyman’s work. Throughout the show, he presents ghastly subject matter in a matter-of-fact way that only intensifies how disturbing each thing is, and this experience of facing the raw humanity implicit in so many horrors will stick with me for a long time.

4. JANNIS KOUNELLIS at Fondazione Prada

Fondazione Prada’s encyclopedic retrospective of pioneer Jannis Kounellis was breathtaking. The Greek-born Italian artist’s sculptures from every point in his career are installed across three entire floors of the palace’s dilapidated interior. As one of the founding members of what is now known as the Arte Povera movement, the materiality of Kounellis’s works is a real draw. Everything from his experiments in coffee grounds, to his burlap sack and bean sculptures, to his blue-gas flame installations are on view. Of particular note to me was his piece, Untitled (2004), made from 452 rolls of lead and fabric, stuffed into a doorway functioning as a single unit, integral to the building’s structure. One of the biggest successes of the show is the way it so clearly demonstrates Kounellis’s elevation of industrial materials to art media. Similar to La Pelle, the building served to reinforce the material nature of Kounellis’s artworks. Crumbling marble, chipped plaster, and hard-wrought beams fit perfectly alongside the rusted iron flowers and decaying bronze bells in the show. Every aspect of Prada’s exhibition this year was full of reverence for the artist’s memory, and the show served his practice well.

5. Human at San Giorgio Maggiore

When I first walked into San Giorgio and saw Sean Scully’s sculpture, Opulent Ascension (2019), I was floored. The brightly colored felt tower, measuring a mammoth thirty-three and a half feet tall, is placed directly at the center of the nave, beneath the dome. The saturated colors of the felt play off of the shallow range of cool grays, blue-greens, and natural whites of the surrounding marble architecture to create a truly otherworldly experience. The closer you get to the sculpture, the more appropriate it feels as a gateway to heaven, and the view after entering the sculpture feels completely divine. You have to crane your neck completely up to see the oculus of the dome, which acts like a tunnel to heaven, while the striated colors of the tower zoom you along. I spent what felt like an hour with Opulent Ascension, completely involved in the work. And that is just the first piece in the show. Human is a retrospective exhibition on the Irish-born American artist, Sean Scully, that features a few new works, among them Opulent Ascension. As I moved through the sacristy and cloisters of the abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore, I came to a special peace, along with the help of Scully’s emotionally-packed canvases. I think Scully achieved his goal in showing contemporary artworks for the enrichment of the Catholic faith. The meditative quality of his large-scale paintings and sculptures within the context of a more traditional religious setting did not feel at odds at all. I felt calmed, like each of his pieces was a nun with a quiet fortitude. Human was among my favorite shows in Venice, and likely among my favorites ever.

So that’s my Hasty and Unsolicited Take on an Arbitrary Smattering of Collateral Exhibitions at the 2019 Venice Biennale. These are not all the shows I saw, but they are the ones I was most excited to write about, for one reason or another. If you end up going to Venice, remember to wear sunscreen, stay hydrated, and don’t drink the canal water no matter what.  I promise it’s too salty. Trust me.

Living in Venice

Living in Venice was a formative experience, especially since I was there during the Biennale Arte, which meant that the entire city was overtaken by contemporary art. Everywhere I went I would stumble upon a fabulous contemporary art exhibition. One day, I was walking to get a coffee and stumbled upon a sign that directed me to Ca’d’Oro, an old Venetian palace that exhibits a permanent collection of medieval and renaissance art along with visiting contemporary art exhibitions. I find the fusion of historical masterworks with “the now” to be particularly special to Venice. While most major cities, like New York, have contemporary art museums and historical collections like the Met and Frick, it is very rare to see the two combined. In Venice, however, collections like the Ca’d’Oro and the Fondazione Prada exhibit contemporary art installations alongside frescoes and old masterworks. The modern subjects of capitalism and industrialism that can be found in the Arte Povera installations of the Jannis Kounellis exhibition are juxtaposed with medieval images of monarchy and religion. These contrasting styles make Venice so unique to any other city in the world.

Another great aspect about living in Venice during the Biennale was of course the social scene. The Biennale attracts people from all around the world who are specifically interested in contemporary art. There are also, of course, all of the other interns that were working in the Biennale like us. Therefore, it was an amazing opportunity to make new friends and have interesting conversations with different types of people who have the same interests that I have. My fellow interns and I went to many Baccari on the canals with new friends that I met throughout the city. Baccari are the typical Venetian bars that offer a wide range of gastronomic but inexpensive finger foods and wines. I will definitely miss the bacala fish, which is a dish that can only be found in Venice.

Moreover, living in Venice is amazing, but also difficult. The city is extremely congested because of tourists. While there are only about 200,000 Venetians, the Venice is overwhelmed by 30,000,000 tourists a year. This makes walking anywhere very slow and inconvenient. While we were in Venice, there was a lot of controversy revolving around cruise ships. There are many people that want to ban the cruise ships from entering the lagoon, since they raise the water which is detrimental to Venice, for the city is constantly flooding. The cruise ships also of course bring thousands of tourists into the city for the day, without providing Venice with much revenue, since the tourists sleep and eat on the boat and therefore spend little to no money in the city. In the month that we were there, two cruise ships crashed into the city, severely damaging Venice. I think it’s very sad how the city’s beauty has made it so overwhelmed by tourists.

My Experience in Venice

Venice is a magnificent city that is known for its contemporary art festival, the Venice Biennale. People come from far and wide to marvel at the works that have received so much buzz throughout social media, news outlets, and other platforms. Venice is rich in artworks that are part of the classical era but it was apparent during my stay in Venice that they are featuring more work that is of the modern age—works that reflect the times.

I remembered that on my morning commute to the Giardini I would walk past the sculpture garden, Giardini Della Marinaressa, and I would catch glimpses of each of the works but I couldn’t stop to fully engage with the sculptures to the extent I would have liked, because I was heading to work. But one day, on my day off, I decided to go to the sculptures and invest some time with each. I had noticed that many of the sculptures were ambigious. They didn’t appear as if they were assigned a specific sex, and I don’t think that was the focal point of those artists. Also, many of the sculptures were massive, and painted with a brilliant color that one couldn’t ignore. As the sunlight struck each of these sculptures, it created a sense of luminosity. The brilliance of the light cast a halo around the sculptures. Many of these works are stylized, the proportions of these figures exaggerated to coincide with the scale of the work, while very few sculptures used some elements of realism.

One artist in particular, Carole Feuerman, made a hyperrealistic sculpture that imitated a young woman in swimwear kneeling on a ball that is sprinkled with drops of water. The woman that she depicts could be an athlete who is on the swim team.  As I looked closely, there were drops of water pressed against her skin that appeared to be moving down her body even though the figure is frozen in time. The drips of water on her skin seemed so real; her skin tone so naturalistic it appeared as if it were actual flesh. There were even little folds on her wrists as her hands were placing pressure on the ball beneath her. There were wrinkles of skin on her ankles as she flexed her feet; the water cap on the figure was loosely fitted on her head and had creases on it that appear down the middle of the cap. Feuerman pays close attention to the smallest of details, the entire sculpture is resolved and every aspect of the sculpture given the same amount of attention. She wants us to look closely at the sculpture and to spend time with it. The idea of having the entire composition dealt with reminds me of the Old Masters who ensured every part of their works of art was addressed. Feuerman was able to capture a moment in time, this sculpture recounts an event that could have actually taken place in reality.

The majority of the other sculptures by other artists swayed away from the idea of imitating life and decided to venture into creating forms that are not representative of a specific idea. Idan Zareski, one of the artists featured in the garden, did a series of enormous sculptures that all had stretched-out feet that were disproportionate to the figure’s body. Each of the figures was either sprawled out on the base that the sculpture rests upon or placed in an unusual position, and each of them was coated in a brilliant color. I was particularly drawn to the enormous blue figure that appears to have the face of a child who is pouting as if upset that they didn’t get their way. The arms of the figure are folded inward and rest upon its chest. The figure appears to be sulking about something and has not moved-on from that moment. The figure has a large head with small features, such as small ears and a little round nose. The gigantic feet of the figure take up so much space that they do not fit upon the pedestal the figure is sitting upon. When the sun hits the figure, there are shadows that are cast on the figure, while the face of the figure appears to be glossy. That could be a result of the artist using resin, which gives a shiny, finished quality to a work of art. The sculpture is not replicating a specific scene nor person but the viewer can relate to it in the sense that we have all been there—as people we have our moments when we feel defeated as a result of something that occurred in our life. I think making this sculpture in such a large scale adds to the idea that on this journey called life, we will feel weighed down by the enormous burdens that are placed upon us by society.

A Morning Commute Like No Other

Living in Venice has been an absolutely beautiful experience. Even a simple daily task like commuting to work was an experience I will always remember. Every morning, as I left my apartment, I would turn the corner and see the canal, and every morning I was in awe of this sight. I would then continue to cross my first mini-bridge of the day, which may be normal in Venice, but to me the concept of crossing bridges everywhere I went took some getting used to. It being Venice, all the bridges had a very charming and historic quality to them, as they were all made of stone and marble. I would then turn onto another canal and, as I turned the corner, a crooked bell tower would come into sight. I thought it was the funniest thing that this bell tower was never demolished and replaced with something new, but that is Italy for you. We all know the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but turns out I did not have to travel to see it as I had my own leaning tower merely a three-minute walk from my apartment.

As I continued walking to work, I would say good morning to some of the waiters I would pass every day. In fact, I had become friends with one of the waiters and would stop to have a quick chat with them before I continued down my path. In Italy, it is much more normal to engage in conversation casually, even if you are working. When living in New York, on the other hand, commuting is a much different experience. Everyone is always in a rush, walking with their headphones in and not paying attention to anyone around them. Although I love the rush of living in New York City, it was nice to escape that for a while and walk to work more calmly, really taking in the environment around me.

After walking through the narrow alleyways of Venice for a few more minutes, I would turn onto the main canal, which is filled with tourists and, because it has a lot of open space, the summer sun beams down on you. This was the part of my commute when I turned my New York walk back on and zoomed past the crowds of tourists. At the end of this power walk, I ended up at the entrance of Giardini.

Walking out of the Venice streets into the Giardini is like walking out of one fairytale land and straight into another. When I walked into the Giardini every morning, I saw the Central Pavilion across from me. From the roof of the Central Pavilion, mist is being sprayed out and filling the front of it. As I walked through this mist I got this feeling mystic and wonder, which gets me ready for all the new art I will experience that day. I can easily say that the Giardini is one of the most interesting places I have ever walked though. I mean imagine this, 30 small pavilions, each of which are a different architectural style, scattered in a garden located in a lagoon. Moreover, this garden is composed of two small islands with a narrow canal running between the two, which are connected by a small bridge. I don’t know about you, but this place sounds pretty surreal to me.

Being an architecture major, one of my biggest dislikes in the field is when every building or house in a particular area looks exactly the same. For example, if you enter any US suburb you will see identical homes that were mass-produced to be more affordable for new families. The Giardini is the exact opposite of this. It brings so much diversity in architectural design. My favorite pavilions in the Giardini are the Australian and the Nordic Pavilions. The Autrailian Pavilion is this black cube that hovers over the canal, making it a very unique building in Venice. The Nordic Pavilion has a lot of open space and considers the nature of the garden in its design, so there are three trees inside pavilion. This pavilion is a great example of architecture that leaves the nature around it untouched while still creating a structure. Seeing such a variety of architecture on my way to work was an architecture-lover’s dream. I have really enjoyed every minute of the six weeks I spent in Venice, especially the 20 minute commute I took on my way to work at the US Pavilion.

Burano

Venice may be one of the most popular tourist locations in the world, but the region of Veneto has so many more beautiful and rich locations worth the visit. Burano is an island within the lagoon of Veneto and are accessible by a quick vapperato ride from Venice. During my time in Venice I had the opportunity to visit Burano, which is known for its handmade lace and colorful homes.

The island of Burano brought me so much joy when I got to visit it; the small colorful houses in addition to the canals create a charming environment that is sure to put a smile on your face. The houses on this island are painted with bright and bold colors, such as pink, purple, green, blue, yellow, orange and so forth. Every single house on this island is painted a beautiful color, in fact being a house painter is a full-time job on this island. The paint jobs on these houses are regularly maintained, and as you walk though the island you see men walking around in construction clothing covered in splatters of colorful paint. The island of Burano is similar to Venice in that it also has canals; however, it is much more residential than Venice, so houses are no taller than three stories, making the community of Burano feel very homey and welcoming and relaxed. Oftentimes the homeowners would match their outdoor decorations to the color of their home, adding that extra touch of simplistic beauty to the island. Overall this island was one of my favorite places to visit while I was in Venice because it highlighted the simple things in life that can still bring a person so much happiness. The concept of painting a home in colorful paint is quite simple, yet seeing such colors on such a large scale just brightened my day. I am very used to seeing architecture made out of greys and earthy colors, but rarely do I see architecture made of bright colors. Which is a shame, because just as weather can affect a person’s mood, so can color. As a student who studies architecture and hope to pursue it as a career, visiting Burano has really inspired me to think more critically about an element as simple as color when creating designs in the future.

Martin Puryear’s Column for Sally Hemmings and Swallowed Sun (Monstrance and Volute) are two site-specific works at the Venice Biennale. Their relationship to the site dredges up the history of the building and of the United States to make meaning. Working with an assortment of woods and metals, fabric and rope, Puryear investigates the concept of liberty for an international audience.

The show, titled Martin Puryear: Liberty/Libertá, begins from afar with the monumental Swallowed Sun, which looms in front of the building, hiding the pediment from visitors, where “STATI VNITI D’AMERICA” is proudly chiseled. Stiff rays reach out from a dense oval to create a distorted grid when viewed from the front. This part is the “Monstrance” in Monstrance and Volute, a reference to the tool in the Catholic Church used to display the host during Adoration. Many visitors note that the screen appears to bow in, like a dome, before they come nearer and shatter the illusion. The screen is as tall as the building behind it and forces the viewer to walk around either side of it to enter the forecourt. In the forecourt, the viewer discovers the “Volute” part of Monstrance and Volute—a curling black tendril, dressed in rope-bound fabric that sprouts from the back of the screen.

Inside the building, in the domed chamber, at the center of the starburst floor mosaic is Column for Sally Hemings; a wooden column slathered in an uneven coat of white paint, which buckles under the weight of an iron shackle that plunges itself into the top. The title of the piece invokes the name of Sally Hemings, a black slave owned by President Thomas Jefferson, and the mother of six of his children. The column itself refers to the stately stone columns visible through the transom above the center doors, but instead of being executed in stone, Puryear’s column is made of wood. It looks like marble, but in actuality the column lacks the lavishness and imperviousness of marble, substituting instead wood’s propensity to rot and relative cheapness.

In these two objects, Puryear employs a diversity of scale as a testament to his ability to communicate through objects. The enormous Swallowed Sun imposes itself on the Giardini, like a warden. The black oval on the screen is like an eye, perhaps keeping track of which visitors come in and which pass by. Conversely, Sally Hemings is like a bust on a pedestal. Monumental in everything but scale, the stoic Column for Sally Hemings heralds its message in a whisper, rather than a shout.

With these site-specific sculptures, Puryear demands that the audience reconsider an essential characteristic of the American identity: freedom. Normally associated with quilted landscapes and nuclear families, Puryear reminds us that the idyllic, American freedom cannot exist without its grotesque counterpart: restriction. Swallowed Sun addresses this dichotomy at the outset. The sculpture has two sides that cannot be viewed simultaneously. The viewer is either enclosed within the forecourt, or outside the pavilion in the stateless nether between the national pavilions. On the inside, the viewer is faced with the diabolical volute, which is itself a reference to the tail of the dragon in Carpaccio’s St. George and the Dragon. The rope bindings suggest that something sinister has been smuggled into the forecourt and could burst out of the fabric at any minute. Yet, the people on the exterior remain unaware of the ugly truth of the volute. By framing the show with a passage between exterior and interior, Puryear fastens to the viewer an awareness of interiority and exteriority that he plays on throughout the show, in pieces like New Voortrekker and Aso Oke. In this way, he communicates the limits of “guaranteed” freedoms in modern society. In Column for Sally Hemings, Puryear disinters the intentionally buried history of one of Jefferson’s slaves. Any reference to slavery is bound to ignite conversations about “liberty in America,” especially one that is so tightly tethered to an American president. But Puryear does more than monumentalize an oft-forgotten figure—he mirrors the history of the building itself.

To fully understand the context of both of the site-specific works discussed here, we need to understand the site and the historical contexts of its construction. At the end of World War I, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson was a driving force behind the formation of the League of Nations, a peaceable assembly of nations devoted to maintaining good international relations throughout the world. Despite President Wilson playing such a pivotal role in forming the shape of the League of Nations, the U.S. did not join the League of Nations at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. One of the reasons that the U.S. declined to join the League can be distilled to one catchy word: “isolationism.” The United States did not want to involve themselves in European affairs after suffering so many casualties in the First World War, primarily on European soil. Instead, the U.S. chose to fend for itself in the recovering, post-war world, for better or for worse.

Eleven years later, in 1930, when the U.S. built its national pavilion in the Giardini in Venice, the U.S. had the wealth and power to rival the greatest empires of the time. The U.S. pavilion was (and remains) the only privately-owned, privately-funded pavilion in the world, which was a testament to the private wealth in the U.S. that persisted even during these fledgling years of what would come to be known as the Great Depression. The American pavilion was the tenth in the Giardini, preceded only by Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, Hungary, France, Russia, Spain, and Czechoslovakia. The glistening group of cohorts in the Giardini separated themselves from the U.S. in one major way: history. The other countries had what were considered rich histories of global dominion, and each was a major player in Western history. The US did not possess a history that anyone from the period cared about, so they had to assert their legitimacy somehow. The architecture thusly hails Monticello: Thomas Jefferson’s home in Virginia, whose style stands as an example of Americanized Palladian architecture. The U.S. pavilion usurps the artistic history of Venice to assert the veracity of the American identity.

This is one of the histories that Martin Puryear is referring to in making these works site specific. He kidnaps the language of a building set on legitimizing a nation’s history and does exactly that—legitimizes the nation’s history. But not the history that Americans are taught at large. Rather, Puryear displays the ugly history of how America really amassed its wealth: slavery and nationalism. Martin Puryear: Liberty/Libertá is as much about captivity as it is about freedom. The two always exist together, the people held captive by the Constitution are just stashed away in archives and unsupported neighborhoods. By presenting works that communicate with the site, Puryear includes the site in the presentation, erasing any morsel of neutrality from the space. He strips away the seamless coat of white paint inside the white cube to reveal the inherently nationalistic undertones of the pavilion and the racist path that has lead us to where we are today.

Two pieces that I think are interesting to put in dialogue with one another are Tabernacle (2019), and New Voortrekker, (2019). What I appreciate about these two works is how they successfully communicate current issues of racial inequality and oppression while providing historical contextualization. Tabernacle is clearly a reference to the American Civil War, since the exterior of the sculpture is shaped like a hat that was worn during the Civil War by both Union and Confederate soldiers. Likewise, the interior of the piece reveals a cannon, an outdated weapon, and a cozy home antique interior with 19th century French quilting, which was also common during the time of the Civil War. Remarkably, the circular window of the statue that allows viewers to peer inside its interior could also be interpreted as the viewfinder of a modern day assault rifle. With that, we have the artist making a statement about the current issue of gun violence in America and its connection to the post Emancipation Proclamation racial tensions in the United States.

New Voortrekker is a sculpture of a carriage that references the history of destructive European exploration, specifically that of the Dutch in South Africa. The voortrekers were a Dutch population that ventured from the coast of South Africa into its interior in order to colonize more land. In doing so, the Voortrekkers massacred the indigenous people they encountered. Similarly, in the United States, European colonizers moved from the East Coast into the rural interior of the country to take over more land. Like the voortrekkers, American settlers killed the Native Americans in order to take control of their lands. The modern automobile that is pulling the antique carriage in the sculpture could very well be an allegory for human progress. I see the automobile being weighed down by the carriage, or, in other words, weighed down by the past. The car and carriage are on a plank that balances on a sphere and, therefore, the road to progress is unstable and is weighed down by issues of aggression and oppression from the past.

Like Tabernacle, this piece makes people think about current political issues. When engaging in conversations with viewers, people bring up themes of migration and the migrant crisis in Europe. Of course, another issue of migration is that of Mexican immigration to the U.S. and the severely unjust and inhumane policies toward Mexican migrants by the U.S. government. Under the current administration, children have been put into cages and have been separated from their families. I also had an instance where I was speaking to someone about the Aso Oke piece and they said that it looked like a cage. This was interesting because so much of the exhibition’s art references physical constraint and the lack of liberty, like the shackle in A Column for Sally Hemings (2019).

In both Tabernacle and New Voortrekker, Martin makes viewers look at their own reflection in the piece. I find this to be both provocative and meaningful, as if the audience is meant to think of the pieces existentially and ask themselves whether or not they are the problem or the solution in regards to the contentious subjects of these works. There was one instance in which Tabernacle actually insinuated an argument between two strangers. One thought that it was inappropriate that the other one asked where Martin was from after hearing the Civil War and present day gun violence narratives about Tabernacle.

I also had conversations with the children when we visited the pavilion in which we talked about the choice of colors in New Voortrekker. Interestingly enough, the sculpture is entirely beige, the natural color of its wooden material, except for the carriage which has been painted grey. One student asked why the carriage was grey and the car was beige. We discussed these distinctive colors and came to the conclusion that it could very well be that the artist inverted the colors of the car and the carriage. Cars are often grey or silver and are made out of metal, whereas carriages were of course wooden. We discussed why the artist might have done this and then came to the realization that it could very well have been to juxtapose two forms of technology. Another student noted that cars are worse than carriages because they create pollution.

Many of Martin’s works focus on the idea of identity and how we choose to distinguish ourselves from others. One of Martin’s works in particular stands as a part of a cultural identity—Aso Oke (2019). It was modeled after an item of headwear bearing the same name as the title of the piece; the headwear was worn as a part of a Nigerian man’s attire throughout West Africa. The piece was cast in bronze with lines that intertwine with one another to form gaping holes within it. It has a left flap that leans on the side of the structure. At first glance, it resembles a cage, a place of containment. A young woman once told me she felt like she was not allowed to enter this structure because of its rigid lines. She could look within it but was not welcome to go inside it; she felt at a standstill.

Many people circle around this piece because they cannot fathom the fact that it is cast in bronze. This leaves many viewers puzzled and wanting to know more about this piece. Many people have confronted me and said that they believe the material listed on the label is incorrect, even though I provided them with an explanation as to how this was constructed. Many of those viewers brought their previous knowledge about materials and applied it to what they were looking at. I remember a few individuals stating that the curves and warping of the lines reminded them of the flexibility of bamboo, and they thought the bamboo was cast in bronze in order to preserve its form. I thought this was fascinating, considering that a lot of Martin’s work deals with the idea of permanence.

The lines of this structure wrap around one another almost like a cocoon as they swirl and bend to each other’s whims. Even though this sculpture is still, there is a sense of movement in how the lines twist and suspend in the air, then come down to form the flap of the hat. A mother holding her child said she felt a sense of a swaying motion from this structure. She assumed that the structure was lightweight and could be easily blown over by a burst of wind.

The act of weaving is present throughout this sculpture, which is an important part of African culture. The term oke in Yoruba culture means “top cloth” or “precious cloth” and it also used as an indicator of one’s independence after African nations were able to govern themselves. When a Nigerian man wears an aso oke hat, it is worn with pride, for one’s country and its inhabitants. There is a sense of community established by this hat; it is deeply rooted in the history of its people. This piece commands one’s attention, one can’t simply go around it without acknowledging its presence.

When you walk into the last room of the United States Pavilion, you immediately see Tabernacle in front of you, at the end of the room. Then, you turn your head to the right to see Aso Oke, and behind it, through the large windows, Swallowed Sun. The last room of the pavilion is so rich and invites so many conversations. It starts off with Aso Oke, which has a complex materiality, though my interpretation of it is simple. Then we get to the more politically-charged Tabernacle, which I consider to be an interactive piece as it invites the viewer to have a conversation about the topic of gun violence in the United States.

Aso Oke is a sculpture made entirely out of bronze, which surprises everyone that passes it. Its materiality is surprising because it is so detailed and has a lot of openings in it that it seem impossible to cast. However, Martin Puryear, with extraordinary skill, was able to make this sculpture out of bronze using the lost wax technique. Martin continues to manipulate the eye by painting the bronze in an earthy light brown color, again leading viewers’ minds astray from thinking it is made from bronze. Since the sculpture is so large and made of bronze, it weighs about 2,000 pounds or 1 ton. However, with its airy, non-uniform grid pattern and the light from the window shining through it, one might not believe it is such a heavy object. In fact, Aso Oke is the piece visitors attempt to touch most often. When asking visitors to not touch the artwork, I would often get responses along the lines of “I was just curious about what it is made of.” More interestingly, I would often see visitors attempt to touch the piece after they had read its plaque. While stopping them from touching it, they would respond, “I just wanted to make sure it is actually made of bronze.” Although the visitors were not allowed to touch the artwork, it was clear to me that Aso Oke made the visitors think about the materiality of the piece.

Aso Oke is just one of the pieces in the United States Pavilion with which Martin surprises the visitors with materiality. Hibernian Testosterone is made of aluminum, however its paint makes it resemble something like cast plaster. The column of A Column for Sally Hemings is made of wood, although one would assume it is made of marble when seeing it from afar. Lastly, the top piece of Cloister-Redoubt or Cloistered Doubt? looks like it is made of a thin metal, but is in fact made of wood. Over and over again, we see how skillful Martin Puryear is and how much he cares about the craftsmanship and materiality in his work.

Although Aso Oke required a very complicated technique to build, the interpretation I have of the piece is quite simple. Aso Oke is a hat worn by Nigerian men, and that is exactly as I see it: an object that is a marker of someone’s culture and ethnicity.

Alongside Aso Oke stands Tabernacle, which is probably the most layered piece in the U.S. Pavilion this year. It introduces the important conversation of gun violence in the United States. The piece itself is a large-scale forage hat worn by the soldiers during the United States Civil War. This hat has three circular windows, which transform Tabernacle into a home. These make up the first physical layer of the sculpture. The second physical layer of the sculpture is a tufted lining of the interior of the hat using a French colonial fabric. The bottom of this sculpture has a wooden floor, mimicking the style of a hardwood floor you would find in many homes. The windows, the tufted walls made with domestic fabric, and hardwood floor turn the forage cap into a home-like environment. With all this being said, inside this domestic object Martin Puryear puts in a replica of a Civil War cannon. Martin Puryear puts this weapon inside what we have established as a representation of a home as a commentary on the right to bear arms and gun violence in the United States.

With that being said, Martin Puryear does not simply put a war cannon inside of this transformed forage hat. He makes the piece interactive, inviting the audience to question themselves on the subject rather than just telling the visitor what he believes. The inside of the cannon faces the main window with mullions which mimic the crosshair in a viewfinder of a modern weapon. Therefore, the crosshair of this cannon is on the viewer looking inside the sculpture. Moreover, the lip of the cannon is made of a wood that has a striated pattern, similar to the pattern in a human eye. And the bullet of the cannon itself is made of a chrome material, making it reflective and like the pupil of an eye. The eye in the cannon and the eye of the visitor look directly at each other, with a window/crosshair in between the two. This aspect of the sculpture makes it more than just a commentary on gun violence. It invites the viewer to look at themselves in the reflection of the cannon’s bullet through a crosshair, inside a home, and ask themselves what they think. It is not an interactive artwork in the typical sense but, from being with it for over a month, I have seen so many visitors interact with this piece without the need to touch it or go inside it.

My time in Venice has been amazing, despite almost feeling like a fever dream. I can’t believe how quickly everything has moved from the moment we touched down. All the food is to die for. As soon as we were settled in, we got to work straight away with the teachers at La Pietà.

I couldn’t be gladder with the way things are going with regards to teaching. The other three teachers here are so comfortable and do such an excellent job in the areas where I find myself lacking, such as organization and resource management. The students themselves are beyond a joy. At La Pietà, the students have become quite comfortable with us already and they make art about us when we give them chances to free draw. Each is in tune with the lesson that we teach and they all make great work and have so much fun doing it. The small students who drop in and out as we work have also taken to drawing and playing with materials, which makes me so happy. At San Donà, the students are very different but equally fun. The older boys there are at a tough spot in their lives and find it hard to make personal work. They don’t want to write about themselves because they’re still figuring that out, and that’s totally fine! They still appreciate us, they’re very polite, and they’re very excited to see us each week (though they show it in their own ways).

The pavilion itself has been a pleasure. I am constantly reminded of how fortunate I am to be here when guests come back to Martin’s work over and over, sometimes over multiple days. Martin’s work is so poised, graceful, and present that it is calming to be around it. It demands a quiet reverence from anyone who looks at it, in a way that I’ve never seen. I’ve learned so many new things about the work and found so many new interpretations from talking to people. A lot of people look at the “barrel” of Tabernacle as an eye, and the timbers on Cloister-Redoubt or Cloistered Doubt? as a funeral pyre. Perhaps the most fascinating interpretation that I’ve encountered was with a particularly engaged and interesting couple from New York. We were looking at Aso Oke, and I mentioned the significance of the hat to the Yoruba people. The man then informed me of the rich tradition of brass and bronze casting in Yoruba culture, something that I am almost certain Martin is making at least some reference to in this piece. The Yoruba brass and bronze heads are perfect casts from a technique that they developed, however no extant examples of the casting exist in Nigeria anymore. They’ve all been taken to European museums. This information has totally revolutionized the way I think about Aso Oke, because given Martin’s knowledge of West African craftsmanship, I would be shocked if his bronze headpiece was not referring to the bronze heads from the same culture.

Finally, something that has surprised me about Venice is how everything moves here, including time. Navigating the city is daunting, because it is literally a labyrinth. However, once you become acquainted with the different areas, it becomes a breeze. I already feel like I can confidently navigate all of San Marco and Castello which brings me to my second point: Venice is small. Incredibly small. Nothing is ever more than 35 minutes away by foot and you are constantly running into people who you see at the Biennale or who you know personally. It’s like a bizarre college campus made of twisting, tight corridors. Finally, time feels odd here. I can’t tell if it goes quickly or slowly, but it certainly doesn’t move consistently. That could be a matter of me being in a new place and adjusting to a new schedule, but I really cannot predict how long anything will take. Could be a 10 minute walk or a 30 minute walk on the same path with the same conditions. It is incredibly odd.

I love this city though. The Biennale is a special place and a special experience that I feel so lucky to be a part of. I’m only angry that I’m so young, because now I’m going to spend the rest of my life wanting to come back.

Arriving in Venice was incredible. We met Gaia first and road with her in the boat taxi to our sun filled apartment which was delightful. A few hours later, when we first arrived at La Pietà the day that we landed, I was pleased to see the educators. We went through the different activities with them that we were to go through with the children.

On Wednesday June 5^th, we went to San Doná for the first time. The train ride was not very long and it was very beautiful. When we arrived to the house in San Doná, I was surprised with how nice it was. It resembled an Italian villa in the countryside, although a little more minimal. I loved how it had a big garden for the kids to play in. Since we arrived very early, we got to have lunch with the children which was really fun. The girls we had lunch with were all very young and eager to talk to us. When the boys arrived to lunch, I noticed that they were older and much more shy. I had initially thought that because of this the boys would not want to participate in the arts lessons that we had prepared for them, but we were completely wrong. Like the girls, the boys were very eager to participate. I started out by teaching them the first activity where we tear blue paper into different shapes with our fingers and then glue them onto white paper to create a composition. I noticed that the older boys made figurative compositions while the younger girls made very abstract compositions. The energy was wonderful, and while the children did fight a bit, I think overall we successfully taught them the lessons.

Thursday was our orientation with Brooke at the U.S. Pavilion. Seeing Martin’s works for the first time was truly amazing and I loved how bright the U.S.  pavilion was in contrast with the neighboring pavilions that were dark and often showcased video work and sound installation. We also had the chance to watch Brooke give a tour to the Yale Art Gallery which reminded us about the proper way to speak about the works.

Working in the Pavilion this past week has been great because I love talking about the works with visitors in both English and Italian. Generally, no one touches the works which is great. Unfortunately however, the exits of the Pavilion are very confusing and there are no signs, so people often open the wrong doors and enter/exit in the wrong doors. The other interns from the Guggenheim are really great and I love working with them.

One thing that has surprised me about Venice is how confusing it is and how many dead end streets there are. Walking around is very tricky, especially at night. I guess one thing I have enjoyed has been the Venetians, though they are few, they are very nice. I was able to make some local friends by talking with people at the bacari, and the Venetians are very outgoing and well informed about politics and visual culture as well. I hope to make many more friends and have interesting conversations about the complex art scene that the city has to offer.

Venice is filled with history. As you walk upon the cobblestone and stumble upon a significant work of art and take in all it has to offer, passing by a church that has impacted the community surrounding it, with every twist and turn it leads one into a new dimension. I never know what I am going to see as I walk into a narrow alleyway, swaying from left to right to make room for others to pass by, hoping I am going the right way but secretly hoping I am not so I can indulge in all Venice has to offer. I am always surprised by the statues and structures that I encounter because it feels so surreal that I am seeing them in person. I can also identify the artist that created this statue for a square or for the church and the architect who laid the groundwork for this structure. All of my knowledge about art history takes hold as I gaze upon these works; I felt a sense of fulfillment. It is a reminder that this is the profession I am meant to pursue, silencing all the doubt within me. I enjoy taking long walks along the canals as the sun shines on my face, the wind gently blows against my hair, and the waves crash against the docks. The sense of inner peace I felt while doing this reminds me of my time in Trinidad when I was a child and I would take long walks on the beach clutching my grandparents’ hands as they lifted me up and swung me back and forth.

I feel like all the children needed was a little guidance and they were able to go forth and draw their interpretations from the lesson that was taught on Tuesday. They were easily able to make connections between the two lessons. There is this one little girl that seems to have previous knowledge about different types of artists from different time periods and she applied this knowledge to the lesson, which was “Contour Line Object Drawings.” The children drew from life, focusing on the contour lines of the forms that were placed in front of them. They first used white pencil on a dark paper and then, for the second part of the activity, they drew the still life using a black sharpie pen on a bristol square. I remember the little girl mentioning how she could clearly distinguish the positive and negative shapes within each of her drawings and how she had preferred the pastels because she liked the softness of the pencils and liked to create edges that were soft and loose while another child preferred the sharpie pen because he liked using the tip of the sharpie to create precise lines. I had observed how a lot of the children who took longer to complete their drawings were carefully observing the lines they saw on the forms and wanted to create an accurate drawing while the other students who worked a little faster did pay close attention to what they observed but their drawings were much more abstracted, though I could still tell what they were depicting.

Overall, this activity went well and the children were excited to present to us their drawings and to explain to us what they had learned. I felt like they were more open to sharing their opinions with us and I could tell they were becoming less timid with us. I also learned that I should let loose a little, in the sense that I am hesitant to say Italian phrases but the children don’t seem to mind when I say a phrase in Italian, even if I pronounce it wrong. They appreciate my effort. The children are so easy going and follow the directions to a “t.” They are also so intelligent. I feel like sometimes as adults we tend to silence a child’s creativity because it is too bizarre or it is out of the box, but we should allow them to express themselves any way they choose and we shouldn’t place a limit on their creativity. The atmosphere is light-hearted and everyone is learning and growing from one another.

At the Pavilion, the guests that came through the doors showed a lot of interest in Martin’s work and were genuinely puzzled by some of his works and wanted me to provide them with my own interpretations of his work. One woman said “I don’t get” about Cloister–Redoubt or Cloistered Doubt? and just walked off. People are very honest with their opinions at the Pavilion. They don’t hold back. Whenever I am discussing a work with someone, I give them the facts first and then build from there. I prefer to feed them little crumbs and they usually go from there and form their own conclusion about the work. I provide my own interpretation of the work only when asked to because I prefer to hear what other people have to say, rather than them just taking my interpretation as a fact. Some people whom I interacted with also took a keen interest in who I am as a person and what I do. When I mention I am a painter their eyes light up and they ask what I depict in my paintings and hope I continue to pursue my career as an artist even after I graduate. One man had told me how he hopes to see my work at the American Pavilion in the future, which is great to hear coming from someone who barely knows you but has so much faith in you and what you do.

Towards the end of my second week in Venice, I have met college students from all over the world and had several great conversations about our cultural differences and perspectives. One of the most interesting conversations I had was with a product and visual design student who attends Università Iuav di Venezia, and grew up in a town just 60 miles out of the main Venice area. The conversation I had with this student helped me see Italian architecture from a local’s point of view rather than a tourist’s point of view. I learned that the characteristics of Venice that attract tourists to it are the same characteristics that cause Venitian design students to leave their city and settle elsewhere to pursue their passions.

Our conversation started with talking about Singapore and how advanced their architecture and urban landscaping is. This conversation about Singapore led into a discussion of the state of Italian architecture; and as we are both design students, I had mentioned to him that I loved that Venice does not destroy any of their old architecture. I had also mentioned that it was quite a unique experience to be able to study a city’s architectural history by simply walking its streets. With that being said, his perspective on Italian architecture was surprising to me at first, but made me realize that I was only looking at Italian architecture form a visitor’s perspective. He said that although yes, it is nice to be surrounded by such rich and beautiful architecture, Italy was unfortunately living in the past and not allowing the new generations of students to move their cities forward. Even shop, restaurant, or business owners are often unable to make physical changes to the spaces that they own and rent, which restricts their space from matching their mission statements and overall concepts for their businesses. I had never thought about architecture in such a way and, although I will always be a guest in this city, I am glad I have this new perspective about it.

My experience at the U.S. Pavilion on the other hand was all about the tourist’s perspective. I think my most interesting observation about the Biennale is the lack of young Italian visitors. The stigmatization that the Biennale is only for tourists or people who understand/appreciate art is stopping youth from feeling invited and welcomed at the pavilions. For this reason, I am extremely excited to bring the kids from both La Pietà and San Donà to Giardini. I want these kids to know that this art is accessible to everyone to interpret and enjoy. These kids are very aware of the Biennale being present in their city, however none of them have been there before and they were all quite surprised when we told them they all will get several chances to visit this summer. I think what I am most excited to see when they visit is to see all the prior knowledge they have acquired over past weeks about the work of Martin Pruyear come to fruition. I am also excited to see the different reactions they will have to the U.S. Pavilion versus to a pavilion they have no prior knowledge about.

The thing I appreciate most about these kids is the respect and patience they have. For example, the students at San Donà are some of the most polite kids I have ever met. They always clean up after themselves, are always so welcoming, and treat us family. The older students, although they may act too cool at times, always try their best. Another thing I really appreciate about the older kids is their ability to know when to help each other out. Since they live together and care for each other, I have realized on several occasions that they step in to help each other before any of us even get the chance to. Likewise, the children at La Pietà really put in the effort to get to know us and make jokes with us. They are constantly being creative and making their art personal. When I say personal I don’t mean they make just about themselves, but about the memories we have with them, the things they learn about us, and much more. We are in constant conversation about sports, American food, our likes and dislikes, which bring us closer together as a community. My overall take away from working with the kids from both San Donà and La Pietà is the sense of community that they have, and their ability to bring this trait into their artwork. With that being said, I think it will be great to have the kids work on a communal project towards the end of the program.