Venetian Expectations

For less than a business week each spring every other year, the art world congregates to descend upon the Venetian seaport to catch the opening of the Venice Biennale. It’s like the Olympics of the art world. Each country has a pavilion and they compete for the Golden Lion. This year’s theme is "Foreigners Everywhere" with the veil of Gaza surrounding the biannual exhibitions through protests, including one by Ruth Patir, Israel’s designated artist, who refused to exhibit until a ceasefire is called. Turkish video artist Nil Yalter and Brazilian multimedia artist Anna Maria Maiolino were honored with the 2024 Biennale’s Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement, and Australia won the Golden Lion this year. It’s a lot of art, running around, deciding whether or not to wait in lines, and trying to catch boats.

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Day 1 

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11 a.m. Megan Schertler spots me working in the courtyard of the Palazzo Liassidi. She’s with Icelandic artist Egill Sæbjörnsson, who represented Iceland at the 2017 Biennale. I change hotels and head to my first event at Piazza San Marco.

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1:30 p.m.: I get to Illy’s Art Collection event. We check out this year’s Biennale Illy Art collection clips by Guatemalan artist Paula Nicho Cumez, Peruvian artist Rember Yahuarcani, Colombian artist Aycoobo, and the Brazilian collective Mahku. I get caffeinated before the Illy Biennale tour starts. 

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2:00 p.m.: Waiting in the Giardini near Piazza San Marco for the tour to begin. 

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3:00 p.m.: We figured out we were supposed to be at the actual Biennale Giardini for the tour, not the one near the water taxi stands at Piazza San Marco. I immediately arrange for a water taxi so we can get to the Giardini quickly. 

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3:30 p.m.: We arrive at the Giardini only to discover that the Illy Art Tour is at the Arsenale, and that it won’t arrive at the Giardini for another hour. I give up. We tried, and we’ve wasted enough time, so we decided to forgo the tour and take ourselves around. We start seeing “Foreigners Everywhere,” the title for this year’s Biennale, in the main exhibition hall. It’s indeed filled with art. I discover the artist Aloïse Corbaz, an outsider artist from the ‘60s who was in Jean Dubuffet’s art collection. There’s something alluring about her work. Maybe it’s the vivid colors, or the eccentric characters, but I like it. I see Maria Taniguchi, an abstractionist from the Philippines, who is known for her tiny, delicate, repetitive rectangles that resemble bricks. You can barely see them from afar, but once you get close, you see how precise she had to be while painting these large scale canvases. There’s also Ione Saldanha’s hanging bamboo canes from the ‘60s. She harvested them herself before painting colorful patterns over them. 

4:15 p.m.: We head over to the American Pavilion and there’s a long line. Luckily, we were able to use our press passes and were escorted right in. This year's pavilion is a big deal. It’s the first time a Native American artist, Jeffrey Gibson, has represented the United States at the festival, now in its 60th year. It’s also the first time a queer indigenous artist has ever represented the country. Gibson covered the pavilion in red—which can represent blood, war, courage, and victory to some Native Americans, and death or defeat for others—painting bold patterns over it. I walk through the historical space, which the artist hopes will help Indigenous art become central to the human experience. I love the colors and the historical references, like the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act, which is weaved into one of his sculptures. 

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5:30 p.m.: After several rumbles of thunder it starts raining while we’re in the Brazilian Pavilion. We skip Egypt because of its long line, and head over to the Scandinavian Pavilion, where we wait out the rain before we decide to leave.

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7 p.m.: I reemerge at Kasmin’s party to celebrate the opening of the gallery’s Walton Ford exhibition at Ateneo Veneto. There are spritzes and chicchetti, the Venetian version of tapas. 

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8 p.m.: We head to the party to celebrate Eddie Martinez at the Hotel Danieli, one of the iconic hotels on the Grand Canal. Martinez just opened at the San Marino Pavilion. More spritzes and pasta. A lot of art world people are around, including Art Basel Miami Beach director Bridget Finn, Zwirner director Elena Soboleva, and SCAD Museum of Art Chief Curator Daniel S. Palmer.

8:45 p.m.: The line to get to the island where the Canada Pavilion’s party is insane. I decided to abandon that idea and head to a cocktail party hosted by Commonwealth and Council, High Art, Kurimanzutto, Tina Kim Gallery, Jam Acuzar, Mar Coson, and Chomwan Weeraworawit at Bar Al Campanile. It had everything I need—good artists like Paul Pfeiffer, Julie Mehretu, and Maria Taniguchi—and a ton of industry people, like Chris Liu, a former Whitney curator who now has his own consultancy. He told me he was the one who put the Elsa Rensaa exhibition in motion at James Fuentes in New York’s Lower East Side. 

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11 p.m.: My friends, who are fellow writers, say they want to try and go to the Rick Owens and Michèle Lamy rave to celebrate her 80th birthday. It’s in a hangar, at the Lido Airport. We pull out cash in case we need to pay for a water taxi, and join the lines for boats near Piazza San Marco. It’s a mad house, and nobody knows what’s going on. We finally get in a boat, and I end up paying for a reporter from Artnet News I just met who ran from the water taxi as soon as it docked. Uh-oh. There’s a mob outside the party. I make my way to the front and explain who I am. After some back and forth they let me in. We then wait 15 minutes at another checkpoint before we’re finally allowed to go in.

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12:30 a.m.: This party is amazing. It’s a mix of Rick Owens’ people and the art industry. Go-go dancers and smoke machines are about. Shirtless bartenders serve the crowd. It’s a proper rave and I’m here for it. I decide to stay and catch Honey Dijon, a house legend, and the night’s headliner. 

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3 a.m.: Time to leave before the party actually ends to avoid the mob trying to get back to Venice. There are no water taxis where we dropped off. We decide to walk 25 minutes and catch the first Vaporetto ( Venice’s version of MTA on water) to Piazza San Marco.

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4:30 a.m.: Home.

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Day 2

11 a.m.: I’m up, out, and ready to go. First stop: Rick Lowe and Wael Shawky, the artist representing the Egyptian Pavilion this year, at the magnificent Palazzo Grimani. 

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11:35 a.m.: I see an exhibition by Seundja Rhee, a late Korean abstractionist, at Spazio ArteNova. She was one of the pioneers.

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11:45 a.m.: I walk over to the La Fucina del Futuro for the San Marino, which has a tradition of inviting artists from outside the country to represent it in line with its history of welcoming outsiders. Martinez moves seamlessly between abstraction and figuration, and sculpture, painting, and drawing. Put this one on your list.  

12:15 p.m.: I walk to the Arsenale to catch the main exhibition. I speed through it, but catch a glimpse of Pacita Abad’s 1995 tapestry, Filipinas in Hong Kong. It brings me back to when I first went to Hong Kong and I was startled by the sight of the domestic workers who lined the streets eating, socializing, playing cards, doing their nails, and other things on Sundays because it was their only day off and they couldn’t stay at home. One of my favorite sections was paintings by Italians that left the country for various reasons. I was especially moved by the Lina Bo Bardi-designed display cases that featured a two-sided glass panel so that viewers could see both sides of the canvases. It was her first time exhibiting during the Biennale. She was an architect, artist, and designer from Rome who lived in Brazil and designed the Casa de Vidro in São Paulo. At the end I find a futuristic figure in a flashing LED-illuminated mini dress that pays homage to those murdered at Pulse in Orlando, Florida in 2016. 

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1 p.m.: I go to the Grand Canal to have lunch on Art Explora’s catamaran, which touts itself as “the world’s first museum boat.” We nibble on cheese and grissini before they bring out a tray of cannoli for dessert. 

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2 p.m.: I head over to see “Transcendence,” an exhibition by Hong Kong artist and designer Wallace Chan, at Santa Maria della Pieta, an 18th-century church Chan selected for his exhibition of enormous titanium sculptures.

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3 p.m.: Next up I walk to see the exhibition by French design couple François-Xavier Lalanne and Claude Lalanne, also known as Les Lalanne, at Palazzo Rota Ivancich for their largest exhibition ever. We took photos sitting on the sheep for fun, and saw pieces they did with Elsa Schiaparelli and Yves Saint Laurent, plus one of two cricket bars created (the other is owned by the British royal family.)

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4 p.m:. Cicchetti break!

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5 p.m.: I walk 20 minutes to Palazzo Diedo, home of Berggruen Arts & Culture, an art space founded by Nicolas Berggruen to see Miles Greenberg, only to discover that I should have went to Palazzo Malipiero, one of three of Nicolas Berggruen’s venues in Venice. I decide to make my way to Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel to see Shahzia Sikander’s mid-career survey, “Collective Behavior.” It’s a beautiful exhibition filled with her intricate mosaics, stained glass works, and sculptures in a gorgeous venue.  

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5:30 p.m.: I head to Balenciaga’s Venice store for a cocktail to check out the new Rodeo bag. It’s oversized, can fit just about anything, and you can add these cute keychains to decorate it.

6 p.m.: I arrive to see Sebastian, Greenberg’s performance at Palazzo Malipiero. He started it at 12:30 p.m., so he’s been standing on this tiny rock-like form for nearly six hours, covered in black body paint as a bag filled with water drips overhead. He has just about two more hours until the performance finishes at 8. I head downstairs to sip a Bellini in the garden, one of the few along the Grand Canal. 

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6:20 p.m.: I run over to Santa Maria della Pietà to see Hong Kong artist Wallace Chan’s titanium sculptures before going to the dinner for the opening a few doors down at Pensione Wildner. 

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10 p.m.: We leave dinner and head to the Rialto Market for Jeffrey Gibson’s party. We get there while Honey Dijon is playing. Everybody is dancing with huge smiles on their faces. She closes her set with a remix of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.”

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Day 3

2 p.m.: My last full day in Venice gets off to a slow start. I grab a quick lunch before going to Palazzo Grassi to see Julie Mehretu exhibition, “Ensemble,” her biggest European exhibition. It features 17 works from the Pinault Collection, as well as works by her close artist friends, including Nairy Baghramian, Huma Bhabha, Robin Coste Lewis, Tacita Dean, David Hammons, Paul Pfeiffer, and Jessica Rankin. 

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5 p.m.: Decisions, decisions. Golden Goose is having a dinner at Haus in Marghera, the sneaker label’s birthplace. It’ll celebrate craftsmanship, art, and culture — core values of the brand — through dreamers Argentinian visual artist Andrés Reisinger, Italian sculptor Fabio Viale, French-Italian painter Maïa Régis, and Puerto Rican singer Mia Lailani. They participated in memorable performances. I decide it’s too far to take a water taxi to the mainland and opt to stay local.

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6:30 p.m.: I head back to the Arsenale for Tod’s Art of Craftsmanship. We fill up a boat that takes us to the enormous venue at a part of the Arsenale, the old shipping yard where the Biennale is held, that you can only approach by water. I take in the Venetian artisans as they turn Tod’s iconic Gammino loafer into renditions made with gold leaf and glass. 

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9 p.m.: We walk down to check out the Estonia party and stay for a little bit before loading up in a water taxi to…

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10 p.m.: ...Berggruen Arts & Culture to see Seth Troxler DJ. We dance until around midnight, when the police show up to close the party down.

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‍12:30 a.m.: Trying to figure out our last move. We decide on a quick nightcap back at Bar Al Campanile, before I go back to my hotel to sleep before catching the train to Milan the next morning. I find out that the Australian Pavilion won this year’s Golden Lion. I close my eyes wanting to return to actually see the Biennale minus the crowds. Let’s see.