Achi news desk-
Ohoriginally a 13th century convent, and once a reformatory for prostitutes, the Giudecca women’s prison, located on an island in the Venetian lagoon, will fulfill a very different role this summer: as the official pavilion of the Vatican in Venice this year Biennale.
Pope Francis is due to attend on 28 April – the first pontifical visit to the Biennale since it was founded in 1895. In the women’s prison he will see work by Maurizio Cattelan, who created a hyper-realistic sculpture in 1999 depicting Pope John. Paul II is struck down by a meteorite.
For this exhibition, however, the Italian-born artist is contributing work to be displayed on the facade of the prison chapel. Referring to Andrea Mantegna’s painting Lamentation Over the Dead Christ, it is a large-scale photograph of his own dirty, dusty feet.
Leading one of the first tours of the prison, which members of the public can book, were three prisoners, dressed in striking dark blue and white uniforms which they had designed and made in workshops the prison. They introduced themselves by their first names only – Silvia, Emanuela and Paola.
After being introduced to the prison, Emanuela, a middle-aged woman with neat jewelery and a confident manner, took the group through to the first art venue: the staff bar, which, with its bottles of Select and Aperol, could have been any bar in the city, although price points are slightly cheaper.
On the walls are displayed radical poster works by Corita Kent, with graphic messages protesting against war and violence. Kent, who died in 1986 and is the only deceased artist featured in the show, spent part of her life as a nun.
Silvia took the lead as guests entered a long, narrow walkway between the prison buildings and its outer walls. The sides are lined with glazed lava stone slabs, painted by the artist Simone Fattal with excerpts from poems written by the prisoners. “Our feelings are written here; a piece of us is written on these works of art,” says Emanuela. On the wall at the end of the avenue, below a lookout post, was a work by Claire Fontaine, an art collective from Palermo. Depicting a large eye with a stroke through it, it conveyed “society’s blindness”, says Paola, “what people don’t look at and what they don’t want to see”.
The walk continued past a large, lush, dense vegetable garden with fruit trees and rows of artichoke plants. Working here, says Emanuela, “we can dream about other things; we can almost forget we are in prison”. The next stop was a wide open court. A few prisoners clustered next to a medieval fountain looked on as Emanuela explained Claire Fontaine’s second work, a large neon text piece mounted on one of the walls reading: “We are with you at night” – “We are with you in the night” – “that speaks to us as a message of unity from the people outside,” he said.
The tour then went through the visitor’s room, to a space where a short film by the artist Marco Perego and his wife, the actor Zoë Saldaña, was being shown. Saldaña, who starred in James Cameron’s Avatar films, acted alongside prisoners in a narrative about a prisoner on her day of release. Describing the process, he said the work was to be “not so much a documentary that has to be honest – instead we encouraged [the inmates] to make a piece of art with us”.
The pavilion was commissioned by Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, who runs the Vatican’s dicastery for culture and education. Co-curators Bruno Racine and Chiara Parisi took over the Vatican pavilion “on the basis of perfect trust with the cardinal, who is himself a famous poet”, said Racine, former director of the National Library of France. “He understands the psychology of an artist and the desire for autonomy and not being subject to the influence of outside ideas.”
When asked if she was Roman Catholic, one of the artists involved in the project, French hip-hop choreographer Bintou Dembélé, laughed. “My religion is the street,” he said.
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The post Art Insider: Vatican to establish Biennale pavilion at Venice women’s prison – The Guardian appeared first on Canada News Media.
