Still Venice

Much less crowded than usual, Venice welcomes the summer of this unusual year while joyful groups of Biennalites stroll among alleys and canals (how could we translate ‘calle’ and ‘rio’?). No more silence, not yet noise. Our breath still leads us along familiar trails, rich with memories and sometimes with wonders: after all, Venice does not impose any structured experience, but offers discoveries and surprises, encouraging the wayfarer to lose the orientation.

Between the Arsenal and the Gardens (two sanctuaries of the Biennale), via Garibaldi invites for a nice exploration. It is the only ‘normal’ street, and its contrast with Venice’s ordinary anomalies makes it intriguing. Long and wide, rhythmic with fruitmongers, vintage shops, coffee bars and small restaurants, it displays moments of real life: its residents know each other very well, and almost ignore the occasional passage of voyagers, who try to conceal their being strangers by keeping silent.

After a long walk, a small bridge conveys us into Fondamenta Sant’Anna where Venice Art Project hosts the exhibition “Sinkingscapes”. Almost dark, totally silent despite the urban soundtrack coming from the window, the exhibition space is a big room where the simple geometry of a fountain recalls the dialogue with water crafted by Carlo Scarpa in Querini Stampalia Foundation. Evocations, something you cannot escape from in Venice.

Apparently far from each other, two artists face common questions. How do we consider a town and its dynamics? Are there any ‘pure’ views of a place? Actually, what we are illuded to watch neutrally is something we interpret through filters, memories and desires. Finally, urban landscapes are a cynic mirror through which we end up revealing who we are, at least to ourselves. Tara Sakhi, Lebanese, and Loulou Siem, Londoner, combine reality and imagination within sharp views.

“Strange Skies” is a short series of photographic elaborations based upon real pictures of Beirut a few days after the blast of August 4th 2020. Adding alchemic treatment to the painful and discouraged views of the sky over Beirut, Tara Sakhi multiplies its dystopic discomfort: the cityscape cannot be viewed anymore as it might appear at first sight, since it holds the weight of hostility and unsafety in a contradictory eco-system that we will not be able to enjoy with no subjective bias.

“The Memory of Artificial Landscapes” moves along a symmetrical (well, quite opposite) perspective, inoculating the germs of videogames in Venice. Sculpted and digitally elaborated heads lead the viewer along a hybrid path whose pace is changing continuously among voices, images, unexpected montage and flight jargon. Could it be the same if we keep our awareness, not indulging in unpredictable imagination? Loulou Siem takes it seriously: it could not.

Although clearly different and somehow reciprocally distant, Sakhi and Siem reveal many common views. The intensiveness of their images, sharp photographs of Beirut as well as a sly audiovisual story of Venice, focus upon our natural ambiguity and the related impossibility to be objective. Not bad news, if we consider the pleasure and the richness of experiences which prove reluctant to any possible definitions. The two artists, cosmopolitan and hypertextual, opt for stumbling rather than standing.

Their works, exhibited together, absorb the curiosity of visitors who remain almost frozen feeling surrounded by signs of discomfort. The bleak views of Beirut and the evaporating corners of Venice simply suggest the only road to a possible life: carry light luggage, be receptive and non-prejudicial, accept surprises, do not elude reality and do not avoid illusions. Despite the burden of awareness, there is always a credible elsewhere for our urgencies and dreams.

No more excuses. Whenever we watch, walk, or simply live, too many filters overlap, and the boundaries between reality and imagination, between serious admiration and playful phantasy end up fading indefinitely. What remains is the growing mass of rough experiences that accumulates over an evanescent backbone. “Sinkingscapes” is the first step of a long project aimed at generating views and exchanges out of the conventional map of Venice, based in Venice Art Project’s exhibition spaces.

Conceived by Yasmine Helou, an Italian-Lebanese curator, the exhibition highlights the permanent insufficiency of our perceptions, almost inviting us to elaborate subversive interpretations of life. Yasmine has been active in Paris, Malta, Venice, Mexico, the UK and Beirut, for which she organised an on-line charity raffle for reconstructing the damaged artists’ studios after the 2020 explosion. Terribly serious and openly ironic, Yasmine clearly demonstrates the benefits of being sensible and sensitive in one.