A thought on the 54th Venice Biennale 2011 from Miltos Manetas

The Venice Biennale
was good this year – there were a few significant elements showing
that, maybe, the annoying situation with contemporary art is now
starting to change. These indications were not exactly produced by the
individual work of artists or curators, but seemed to have just
“happened” in different places. At the Egyptian Pavilion for example,
footage of the last performance by a young artist who was killed during
the recent revolution, was shown next to footage of the revolution
itself.

It’s as if Reality, similar to an adolescent that was abandoned for
a very long time at the “care” of a pedantic school teacher, is now
finally coming of age. Now Reality stops taking lessons from Culture
and begins expressing itself by making its very own art and that should
be giving us some kind of hope.

Text Miltos Manetas and a view of Crystals of Resistance by Thomas Hirschorn for the Swiss Pavilion.