Biennale di Venezia: Talking about art is talking about politics

"Art is more powerful than any arrogance," said Pierangelo Buttafuoco, president of the Venice Biennale, on the first day of the famous vernice , which until Saturday will open the doors of the art circus only to professionals with strict invitations. Then, the path of controversy will open to everyone. The United States Pavilion does not even have critics: it is so alien to any interest that the queues of other editions have been replaced by the indifference of empty halls and people who have hurried past it to other destinations. For example, towards the Russian Pavilion, mysterious and contested by the Italian right, starting with the Minister of Culture Giuli, who has announced his absence from the official inauguration, as well as the jury, who has resigned en bloc. Such are the perversions of our society: people from different sides acting in the same way.

The Russian Pavilion, curated by Anastasia Karneeva, will host a myriad of performances during the opening week that will be recorded and later projected on giant screens until November 22, the closing day, while the pavilion will remain locked and bolted. Right opposite, Chus Martínez will curate the Danish pavilion, where Maja Malou Lyse tells a story about sperm donors and banks with video. Too bad that, as usual, the naked bodies are only female… something that is tiring. Is it possible that even in a place like the Venice Biennale, the old taboo on the male body continues to be in force? Talking about sperm is as if it were falling from the sky… anyway… I don't want to quote the proverb that is as stale as it is current.

Female nudes are also worn as if there were no tomorrow in the Austrian pavilion, but it is less annoying than the Danish one, because Florentina Holzinger, who we will soon see in Barcelona at the Grec Festival, is rawer, more authentic and also more capable of catching the viewer's eye with her oriental performers who stage the dichotomy between purity and dirt, cleanliness and contamination. Oriol Vilanova (Manresa, 1980), who, with the curatorship of Carles Guerra, presents Los restos at the Spanish Pavilion, although both artist and curator are Catalan, does not offer controversy, but only a very interesting visual impact. Oriol Vilanova, represented by the Àngels Barcelona gallery, who is doing a double with Claudia Pagès, protagonist of the Catalan Pavilion, has been collecting postcards for two decades. However, he does not do so with the almost manic care of a collector in search of the rare and precious piece; He buys them in packages, rather revealing a desire for accumulation.

This accumulation is displayed in the rooms of the Spanish pavilion with 50,000 copies, many of them repeated. Nothing new: it is his practice, what he always does, but that does not detract from the visual impact that I was talking about earlier. On the other hand, political and social reflections have difficulty emerging if you do not have, like journalists, the artist or the curator to explain them to you. Daughters of the past, postcards are still present in churches and museums; people buy them, but rarely send them. In Venice, a single postcard will star in the performance The Ghost of Freedom , in which an actor will show it to passersby, without words, at times and locations that will not be announced or planned. All the postcards that cover the walls of the pavilion, on the other hand, are part of a publication designed by Zak Group.

The Pavilion of Catalonia offers a much more cryptic experience. Paper tears by Claudia Pagès takes as its starting point an archive of watermarks preserved in Capellades, as the handout states. The space is occupied by a projection in three moments, in which five people activate an archive of 15th-century watermarks through vocal interventions and two stands that, if you don't fall, allow you to watch the projection uncomfortably from a height. Another work that, if they don't explain it to you, you will have a hard time understanding what the author wants to convey.

The Spanish presence in Venice is completed with I Baschi alla Biennale 1976/2026 , with which the Basque Country returns to the lagoon 50 years after its historic participation in the 1976 Venice Biennale. In 1976, in a climate of uncertainty and struggle for freedoms during the Spanish democratic transition, a group of Basque artists raised their voices at the Venice Biennale, using art as a means of expression, freedom and collective affirmation. Today, the Basque Country returns to Venice with a different perspective, with renewed tools and artistic languages, but with the same conviction: that culture is a way of relating to the world. Through a multidisciplinary approach, I Baschi alla Biennale 1976/2026 presents itself as a critical and project-oriented platform, capable of dialogue with the present.

It is also important to remember Antoni Muntadas, the protagonist of a tribute for his 20 years of teaching at the University of Venice IUAV. An entire day was dedicated to the Catalan artist, which began with a conversation between the artist, the art critic and historian Angela Vettese and the curator Ute Meta Bauer. The conversation was joined by art professionals, students, alumni and other people who shared Muntadas' experiences in Italy and Venice. The event lasted well beyond the three hours initially planned and concluded with the inauguration of the exhibition dedicated to Muntadas' 20 years of teaching. The Muntadas exhibition. Information and Documentation: A Selection , which can be visited until May 29 in the Aula Giardino on the Terese campus of the IUAV and which is curated by Andrea Nacach, Muntadas' assistant for many years, presents a small selection of works from the large exhibition that was presented in 2025 at the Polytechnic University of Valencia on the occasion of the awarding of the honorary doctorate to the artist.