Exactly a month ago the 60th Venice Biennale entitled ‘Foreigners Everywhere‘ was opened to both professionals and and general public. I began diving into this event’s selection a few months in advance, and it’s also the first biennale I’m attending as an individual art advisor, not as a representative of some larger institution. So no matter how much I might be disappointed in the curatorial job (which is a whole different topic), my first priority is evaluating the artworks and artists themselves. I flew out with 19 names in my pocket marked for further research and, preferably, urgent purchase for my clients before the prices spike through the roof.
Of course, I was already familiar with a lot of names, like Yael Bartana, John Akomfrah, Jeffrey Gibson, Julien Creuzet, Leilah Babirye, Olga De Amaral, Claire Fontaine, and many others. So I focused on discovering new artists and became even more confident in my choices while composing this letter. All of them are amazing, some I’d even dare to call future superstars. However, the most delightful surprise in all of this has been a perfectly even split between male and female artists, something I have not consciously planned for but which happened organically anyway.
Giulia Andreani, 39 (born in Italy, lives in France)
Medium: figurative painting and work on paper
What’s it about: Giulia repurposes personal memorabilia and archival photos through painting to address forgotten histories, often through a feminist lens. Recalling the collages of Max Ernst and Hannah Höch, this artist uses watercolors and acrylics to reproduce, alter and combine motifs from photographs, generating new layers of meaning.
Price range: up to 20 000 EUR
Monika Correa, 86 (born and lives in India)
Medium: tapestry
What’s it about: Monika began weaving in the 1960s after a visit to Finland where she encountered rya rugs. She uses large circular forms in abstract compositions that have become emblematic of her mature style.
Price range: 20 000 - 40 000 EUR
Omar Mismar, 36 (born and lives in Lebanon)
Medium: interdisciplinary, ranging from mosaic to video installations
What’s it about: Omar’s work probes the entanglement of art and politics and the aesthetics of disaster.
Price range: ~20 000 EUR
Abel Rodrigez, 80 (born and lives in Columbia)
Medium: watercolors and works on paper
What’s it about: Detailed drawings of the Colombian Amazon, preserving indigenous knowledge of the region’s flora and fauna. Abel is a deep connoisseur of plants and and ecological systems.
Price range: ~18 - 25 000 USD
Salman Toor, 41 (born in Pakistan, lives in the USA)
Medium: figurative paintings and drawings
What’s it about: Canonizing the lives, loves, and struggles of queer men of colour. He became a superstar, presenting solo show at Whitney Museum.
Price range: ~ 500 000 USD (auction record was $1.2 million)
Agnes Waruguru, 30 (born in Kenya, lives in Netherlands)
Medium: interdisciplinary: drawing, painting, printmaking, embroidery, textile, etc.
What’s it about: intimacy, women’s practices and traditional cultural identifiers.
Price range: ~ 15 000 EUR
Kim YunShin, 89 (born in North Korea, lives between Argentina and South Korea)
Medium: sculpture and paintings
What’s it about: Kim has developed an aesthetic that engages with the fundamental qualities of different materials and nature, navigating themes of confrontation, introspection, and coexistence.
Price range: ~ 50 000 EUR
Ivan Argote, 41 (born in Columbia, lives in France)
Medium: paintings, sculptures, installations, films and interventions
What’s it about: Ivan develops strategies based on tenderness, affect and humor through which he suggests critical approaches to dominant historical narratives and attempts to decentralize them.
Price range: ~ 10 - 40 000 EUR
Sandra Gamarra, 52 (born in Peru, lives in Spain)
Medium: sculpture, prints and paintings
What’s it about: Sandra’s practice makes reference to cultural production as a construction in balance. Also, the quality of the paintings is just great.
Price range: ~ 30 000 EUR
Wael Shawky, 53 (born and lives in Egypt)
Medium: paintings, sculpture, video and drawings
What’s it about: Wael’s films, installations and performances explore history, culture and the effect of globalization on contemporary societies both through fact and fiction.
Price range: ~ 50 000 EUR
The hardest part of a curator's job is to keep the selection short. After hours, days, and weeks of study the only thing you can do is to talk about everything you’ve found. However, excelling at this job means precisely the opposite - learning as much as you can and using it sparsely. The ten artists mentioned above already deserve praise and following. Nevertheless, for the sake of making this letter digestible I’ve kept five more spectacular artists in the back of my mind for further research.
While composing this letter, I requested a few works on the client’s behalf, hoping it will work out to everyone’s favour. To my surprise, yesterday I also found out that the Loewe Craft Prize exhibition was about to be opened in Palais de Tokyo (despite the scandal around them - this is a wholly unpleasant read) in Paris. The exhibit will be open from May 15th to June 9th. It is full of beautiful, rich objects that constitute sensations all of their own (take a sneak peek here).
Meanwhile, on May 12th Dries van Noten turned 66. I still can’t recover from the announcement of his resignation earlier this spring. To cheer myself up I rewatched the documentary about him, and ran through some of his collections wish-listing previously unaffordable garments in order to continue hunting for them on re-sale platforms later.
Before sending this out, I’ve finished Ann Napolitano’s Hello Beautiful (it’s a great read, taking a lot from Little Women) and watched A Grand Affair (2012). I’m also thinking of watching Challengers (2024) on the weekend - or maybe should I rewatch Match Point (2005) before that?
Enjoy the weekend, and talk to you on Tuesday with a second part of June’s Goings-On!
Sincerely,
Miri