who would be difficult to tell apart in a
“no labels” test. All of them favour the
“woman turns into a bird” type of text-
book surrealism with only the compel-
ling Dorothea Tanning standing apart
with her scary psychic storms.
Anyone hungry for signs of sense
and sentience in this feminine war on
reason is advised to fast-forward
around the interchangeable art in the
central show at the main biennale
venue of the Giardini and head out to
the national pavilions, where much
that is worthwhile can be found.
The French have an entertaining
takeover by Zineb Sedira who trans-
forms one part of their pavilion into an
Algerian bar, circa 1960, complete with
a live smooching couple, and the other
part into a full-scale cinema where a
film about her mother’s journey to
Europe is interspersed with medita-
tions upon cinematic reality by Orson
Welles! F for Fabulous!
Also outstanding is the American
pavilion, which has been radically
transformed by another black artist,
Simone Leigh. The pavilion usually
looks like a polite slice of American
neoclassicism in the manner of Thomas
Jefferson. By giving it a thatched roof
and surrounding it with wooden poles,
Leigh turns the white house into a
black house. Inside, her inventive
sculptures revisit the clichéd “primitiv-
ism” discovered in African art by Euro-
pean modernists to focus instead on
the human stories that lurk within.
Leigh is also one of the stars of part
two of The Milk of Dreams, which con-
tinues at the Arsenale, the sprawling
dockyards of the Venetian navy. Her
giant bronze sculpture of a black
woman whose lower half turns into a
village hut is the first thing you see.
Wow, I thought. This is going to be
good. Unfortunately it’s largely down-
hill from here as the second of The Milk
of Dreams’s most obvious ambitions, to
highlight the work of indigenous crea-
tives from around the colonised world,
turns into unsettling cultural tourism.
Being lectured on the fate of the Sami
people by the Gucci-clad liggers of the
international art world feels like a mis-
timed joke. The thought of all those
Prada pumps getting wet in the Lap-
land snow as they step around the rein-
deer poo is not a serious thought.
Don’t get me started, too, on sustain-
ability when the mind boggles at the
number of flights needed to bring the
art world to Venice or the number of
crates used to transport the aperitifs
for the endless round of parties.
Out of the 213 artists selected for The
Milk of Dreams 191 are women. It’s an
extraordinary statistic and one that
endows the event with a sense of col-
lective purpose that is easy to miss in
the art itself. It’s a corrective that was
needed. Now I hope we can move on to
a situation where art comes first and
identity comes second. The me, me,
me issues being relentlessly flagged in
Venice are beginning to feel uncomfort-
ably out of step with the us, us, us
world in which we live. Ask the woman
pleading for our help from the bunker
in Mariupol.
Half my readership may be wonder-
ing: how did the men do at the 59th
Biennale? I can’t lie. They were, in the
main, big and blokish. Notably Anselm
Kiefer, who was handed the keys to no
less a venue than the Palazzo Ducale in
St Mark’s Square and proceeded to fill
a couple of its grandest halls with huge
slabs of mega art that felt like scenes
from a giant Second World War movie.
Submarines. Explosions. Frothing seas.
The battle culminated in the destruc-
tion of the Palazzo Ducale itself. On the
pottiness scale, it was Leonora Car-
rington x 10,000.
I preferred Raqib Shaw at the Ca’
Pesaro, where a suite of intricate paint-
ings based on old master examples
showed the artist dreaming of a gentle
life in a beautiful garden — Monet-style
— while the world outside burned,
burned, burned. cThe 59th Venice Biennale continues
until Nov 27World at war
Visitors view
work by
Lesia
Khomenko in
the Ukrainian
show at the
59th Venice
BiennaleThe news that Sonia Boyce,
60, has won the Golden Lion
for the best pavilion at the
Venice Biennale — the first
British artist to do so since
Richard Hamilton in 1993 —
isn’t just exciting; it is
mildly surprising.
The award usually goes to
big and showy art — art that
muscles out the opposition
in the frenzy and chaos of
Venice. Conflict isn’t Boyce’s
thing: she makes work that is
welcoming and warm,
enveloping and inclusive.
Sometimes you can hit a nail
on the head without a desire
to bang something.
Her Golden Lion-winning
pavilion is 22-carat Boyce.
Gentle, playful, warm,
poetic. Called Feeling Her
Way, it features five black
female singers, performing
mainly a capella, who were
asked to improvise at the
Abbey Road Studios in
London — Beatles country.
“It’s quite a noisy show, “
Boyce says, smiling. “It
brings joy but I also want
people to feel emotionally
connected to the work. After
the past two years, we need
something that’s going to
inspire. They’re singing so
hopefully.”
The recorded
performances play
in the videos in the
British pavilion
surrounded by
an abstracted
wallpaper that
echoes and
evokes their
individual
presences.
Tanita Tikaram
accompanies herself
on the piano,
improvising fivesongs in a moving session.
Poppy Ajudha warbles and
wails you to tears.
All this was inspired by
a collection of memorabilia
on black female singers in
Britain, the Devotional
project, assembled by Boyce
over many years. A selection
from it features records,
CDs and promotional
photographs, forming a
tone-setting archive, full of
faded memories, which sits
at the centre of the music.
In 1984 I included Boyce
in a show I curated when I
was asked to organise a
selection of paintings and
drawings for the Nicola
Jacobs Gallery in London.
At the time Boyce was
producing vulnerable
self-portraits in which she
cast herself as a wide-eyed
little black girl gazing sadly
into the future. The picture
in our show, called Big
Women’s Talk, showed her
leaning on her mother’s lap,
listening dreamily to the
adult conversation taking
place above and around
her — a warm and
thoughtful image.
After that I lost sight of
her for a time. Meanwhile
she transformed herself into
a multimedia artist with a
series of prominent
contributions and
collaborations,
mainly on the
subject of black
identity. She
began to force
her way back into
the national
consciousness.
Now, quietly, Boyce
has turned herself
into one of the
big women
who is
doing the
talking. c‘AFTER THE PAST
TWO YEARS, WE
NEED TO INSPIRE’
Bringing joy
Sonia BoyceBritain’s Sonia Boyce won the top Venice
award that eluded Bacon, Hockney and
Freud. She talks to Waldemar Januszczak| INTERVIEW
1 May 2022 7