Entrance to the Arsenale at the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. Photo © IFF.
The Crochet Coral Reef is in the Venice Biennale. The 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia titled May You Live in Interesting Times is curated by Ralph Rugoff and features 79 artists from around the world each represented by 2 installations – one in the Arsenale and one in the Central Pavilion of the Giardini. Crochet Coral Reef creators Christine Wertheim and Margaret Wertheim are the sole Australian artists.
Among Rugoff’s propositions for this wide-ranging show is that in our age of “fake news and alternative facts” art cannot be pigeonholed. Instead of a formal theme Rugoff offers a curatorial strategy that opens out to a cross-section of artists working in diverse genres responding in multiple modalities to the changing times we live in. True to this spirit, the 2019 Biennale Arte is the first to have 50% women. Also included are a large number of artists hailing from outside Europe and the US. While stressing that art cannot solve political problems or be a panacea for the ills unsettling our social and environmental landscapes, Rugoff suggests that “in an indirect fashion, perhaps art can be a kind of guide for how to live and think in ‘interesting times.’” As he writes:
“May You Live in Interesting Times will take seriously art’s potential as a method for looking into things that we do not already know – things that may be off-limits, under-the-radar, or otherwise inaccessible for various reasons. It will highlight artworks that explore the interconnectedness of diverse phenomena, and that convey an affinity with the idea, asserted by both Leonardo da Vinci and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, that ‘everything connects with everything else.'”
At the Biennale, two subsets of the Crochet Coral Reef are on show, both highlighting the natural history dimension of the project. In the Arsenale, vitrines housing the Bleached Reef and Toxic Reef are augmented with a site-specific Mathematics Blackboard depicting the hyperbolic geometry underlying the work. Also on display are Reef contributor Helen Bernasconi’s meticulous Hyperbolic Sea Snake and contributor Eleanor Kent’s Electroluminescent Wire Corals crafted from Israeli-made, military-grade EL wire used for lighting the insides of tanks.
On display in the Central Pavilion, in a tiny chapel-like space painted Giotto blue, is a selection of miniature coral Pod Worlds featuring works by some of the Crochet Reef’s most skilled contributors. Together these installations call attention to the imminent threat to living reefs while also highlighting the potential of collective action by humans and cnidarians. By building together, crochet reefers emulate the colony-based processes by which living reefs evolve and form, thus mathematics and craft combine into an art that recapitulates nature’s methodologies.
Works in the show are by Margaret and Christine Wertheim, with contributions from: Nadia Severns, Kathleen Greco, Sarah Simons, Anitra Menning, Sue Von Ohlsen, Rebecca Peapples, Vonda N. MyIntyre, Lucia daVilla Havilan, Anita Bruce, Mieko Fukuhara, Dagma Frinta, Evelyn Hardin, Nancy Lewis, Marianne Middelberg, Arlene Mintzer, Jill Schreier, Pamela Stiles, Barbara Van Elsen, Irene Lundgaard, Una Morrison, Anna Mayer, Christina Simons, Helen Bernasconi and Eleanor Kent; with vintage doilies by unknown makers and bridal adornments by unknown Chinese factory workers.
Read Ralph Rugoff’s Curatorial Statement
Venice Biennale website: Christine Wertheim and Margaret Wertheim
Venice Biennale website: List of Participating Artists
Biennale Catalog essay about the Crochet Coral Reef is authored by Leslie Dick.
Photo Gallery – Click on any image to enlarge.
In the Arsenale: “Toxic Reef” and “Bleached Reef,” with the “Mathematics Blackboard.” Photo © IFF.
In the Arsenale: “Bleached Reef” with “Mathematics Blackboard”.Photo © IFF.
In the Giardini: Jewel-like coral “Pod Worlds”. Photo courtesy La Biennale di Venezia, Italo Rondinella.
In the Giardini: Coral “Pod Worlds”. Photo © IFF.
In the Arsenale: “Bleached Reef”. Photo © IFF.
In the Giardini: “Pod World – Hyperbolic”. Photo courtesy Photo courtesy La Biennale di Venezia, Italo Rondinella.
In the Arsenale: “Toxic Reef” crocheted from video tape, yarn, and tinsel, sitting on a bed of sand adorned with plastic medical waste, ring pull tops, and glitter. Photo © IFF.
In the Arsenale – “Mathematics Blackboard”. Photo © IFF.
In the Arsenale: Electroluminescent wire corals by Eleanor Kent and Margaret Wertheim. Photo © IFF.
In the Giardini: Coral “Pod Worlds”. Photo © IFF.
“Mathematics Blackboard”. Photo © IFF.
Giardini signage – Biennale Arte 2019. Photo © IFF.
The Wertheim’s installations at the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia are supported by the Australia Council for the Arts, Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute, the Opaline Fund of the Jewish Federation and Community Foundation, Muriel Pollia Foundation, Anna Charlesworth and Peter Stephens, Jennifer Steele, Lauren Bon.
Thanks to Richard Nielsen for assisting in the drawing of the Mathematics Blackboard, and to IFF art assistant Christina Simons.