Theme and Title of the Next Venice Biennale Announced

The president of the Venice Biennale, Paolo Baratta, and the curator of the forthcoming edition, Okwui Enwezor announced at a press conference yesterday that the title and theme of the 56th International Art Exhibition will be “All the World’s Futures.”

Enwezor—a writer, curator, and director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich—said that the exhibition will be “devoted to a fresh appraisal of the relationship of art and artists to the current state of things.”

“All the World’s Futures”, Enwezor explained, will consist of a “layer of intersecting ‘filters’” that will serve to organize the exhibition in three different parts: “Liveness: On Epic Duration,” “Garden of Disorder,” and “Capital: A Live Reading.”

Enwezor envisions the exhibition “as a stage, where historical and counter-historical projects will be explored.” The issues that will be tackled seem to be of the political kind. “The ruptures that surround and abound every corner of the global landscape today recall the evanescent debris of previous catastrophes,” he said during the press conference. “Over the course of the last two centuries the radical changes have made new and fascinating ideas subject matter for artists, writers, filmmakers, performers […]. It is with this recognition that 56th International Exhibition of la Biennale de Venezia proposes All the World’s Futures,” he declared.

It remains to be seen how the renowned Enwezor, whose Documenta 11 was widely praised, will approach such a current, yet broad theme. Many art pundits are eagerly anticipating the list of participating artists.

The 56th edition of the Venice Biennale will open to the public on May 9 2015 and will run until November 22.


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