As many of the readers of this magazine know, I am an art critic, not an opera critic – or even an opera fan. My interest in this production was simple: I wanted to see what would happen when a formidable African American concept artist like Kara Walker confronted and re-interpreted a cornerstone of European culture.
Approaching the Pavilion itself feels like a form of travel through time and space: the exhibition is mounted on the second floor of the Palazzo Pisani Moretta, a Baroque Venetian palace on the Grand Canal that now houses the Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello. In order to reach the installations, one traverses a richly decorated entrance hall to the sound of music students convening and rehearsing.
Victor Ehikhamenor grew up seeing symbolic paintings and drawings on shrine-walls in the village of his birth. Upon maturity, after he received a drawing book for school, he began to imitate the wall drawings on paper. Four decades later, some of those walls have crumbled; the artist retains, however, a copy of that drawing book. He carries it in his memory.
We impose our opinions, our norms and morals onto those others or, even worse, we fight and go to war to basically weep them out or conquer them. Geography, religion, spirituality, traditions, ethnicity, gender, race, sexuality, we human beings have defined many ways to separate ourselves from “the other”. Will we ever actually see, respect and value all that includes humanity? Can art be a tool in this struggle?
“Especially the group show in the main building of the Giardini park was of high quality. Because of the selection, but also because of the clever, inspiring installation. All the good things came together there.
Okwui Enwezor did it again. It sounds like an Obama slogan, but this edition will make a difference, especially for contemporary African art.”