The Art of Living in Interstitial Places

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To arrive in Venezia is a sensation of walking on water.

As the train slides above the sea, a salty smell invades my body and like a paradox, it awakens and numbs my senses at the same time. I see the City of Venezia approaching, and the next moment, hypnoses, some kind of a dream.

For many years I have been walking a blurry path that takes me closer to art, and recently I realized this journey has started much before I could get myself ready for it. When arriving in Venice, I knew this would be a labyrinthine one.

To feel passion for something is way different from possessing professional expertise over it, even if it’s a possible combination. The subject: the need or privilege to love and work on the same thing has been extensively discussed lately. I believe that with time passing in a much rapid speed, the understanding that it can be over, causes us anxiety to want to live it all together now. Therefore, since now happens too fast, we wish all our ‘nows’ are replete of that which we love. Fair enough.

Being in Europe during Election period, in a world that likes mediating political aggression and diversity intolerance, the immigration theme almost becomes a cliché. In fact, even if I was in the borders between Brazil and Venezuela, or EUA and Mexico, the subject wouldn’t change much. For lack of creativity. The Lebanese artist, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, exposing at La Biennale 58th, would say “we are all wall, and no wall at all.”

For this reason, when arriving in Venice, I started my labyrinth by diving into a scavenger hunt around the canals and narrow alleys searching for the latest mural, preceding Banksy’s omen. For some, a wall is the last thing they desire to mind, but on that quiet Venetian morning, all walls knew where, but didn’t want to share its location with me. I couldn’t help but to search for it.

It was then, that between a bridge and a church, a garbage boat sailor saw me seeking for something that for his eyes was non-existent and took me by the hand to search for the migrant child, his name was Mattia. Though she held her neon pink flare, I was unable to find her by myself. Even in times of instant messages, in life, it doesn’t always find its way to the destination. But communication is power. To communicate means to create common, one.

Mattia didn’t know Banksy, or the mural, nor the streets of Venice. He declared for me in secret that he navigates and knows the city only from the outside. He doesn't walk, he floats.

And isn’t it precisely like that? Every so often, it becomes necessary to change the horizon's reference to come up with answers. But my mission wasn’t over. Seeing me and Mattia in an fascinating interaction, me and the garbageman, — I would rather call him pirate, one who transports the treasure from one place to another — a woman and her dog came to offer help. She simply nodded and smiled, indicating where the super-not-yet-over-pictured-new Banksy’s mural was hidden, I should just cross the bridge behind me and I would see it in front of me. Charming and simple, yet strong and tearing. I told Mattia to come with me witness the piece of art while the Venetian woman invited me to participate in a protest against the tourist cruise ships and asked me how Banksy’s augury could have been so precise and how incredible it was that coincidentally a cruise ship crashed on the same day of a traditional folklore holiday, where the city celebrates the marriage between the Venetian Dodge and the sea.

I took a picture of the migrant girl, said goodbye to my adventure mates, tagged Banksy on my Instagram story and restarted my leap between present and past that walking the streets which Venice provides. On that moment my heart got anchored. It was a sad subject, though my hunting experience was exciting. I was elated to see random people voluntarily getting together to find the lost migrant girl.

Around 200 year ago, this same story happened, but in a different move. My family, coming from Veneto, the same region of Venice, marched to the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. They took a ship from Genoa, hoping for a better, less repressed life in ‘Tupiniquins’’ lands, in Brazil. At the end, I wasn’t simply looking for Banksy. I was actually thanking my ancestries, who had the courage and luck of being welcomed, with a bit more dignity, when they were brave enough to dare cross the ocean.

It was past 10 AM, time flies short when we are living in the present moment. La Biennale wouldn’t wait for my arrival, though it would only live for me once I entered the enchanted portal of the Artiglierie Pavilion. I yet don’t remember if there was music on the background, if we were all in silence. My thoughts and sensations were screaming so loud inside, they created a wired void. If I close my eyes now, I still can see those black, rounded eyes gazing at me. The BAW photographs taken by Zanele Muholi are engraved on my retina. Looking deeper, beyond the strength and fear and violence that I saw on that face, a subtle thought came to me, “look for the delicacy this pose is trying to hide.” I didn’t evaluate the photograph, who I am to do so? But I felt the power she captured through her lenses and translated in art. It still brings tears on my eyes. That might be the reason why the word art lives inside the heart.

The greatest beauty and privilege of not being an art professional is to let my unfamiliarized eyes create such unique bonds between me and what I see, that I’m able to transform them into an eternal memory of a moment of intimacy, whereby in trusting the work of an artist, I share with him a recollection of smells, people and moments, that even I didn’t know they were still alive, somewhere hidden inside my inner universe. It is about developing a superpower that enables you to shape time in a way that only you know how to count. It is about knowing you only exist and continue exiting if you let yourself share with and absorb from the other.

After this impactful beginning, I let myself flow between big sculptures, artificial intelligence, robotics, plastic, trash, manmade materials, vibrant colors, smells, textures, lights, stripes and rainbows. If a medieval person was teleported to the central pavilion, she would for sure think we live in interesting times, not for oversimplifying things, but rather, overwhelming ourselves with them. Like walking without sunglasses on Ryoji Ikeda, Spectra III installation, an accurate translation of data blizzard, indeed. Since I’m not a data scientist, I could even say that his piece of work and The Room of Change at the XXII Triennale di Milano, resonate on the same frequency. Or by being bombarded with multiple screens on the same installation, exposing not only different information, sounds and videos, but also absurdly contrasting. A remarkable example is BLKNWS of Kahlil Joseph, where we publicly watched porn robot’s movies. In Italy the elderly would say “né in Cielo, né in Terra”, as highlighted in neon by the artist, Liliana Moro.

But not just of shock art lives, in fact, as far as I let myself dive in, it doesn’t live out of shock at all, but rather of concepts wrapped around the huge desire of self-understanding or helping the world observe itself. It is normal to get lost in confused memories when in big art events, museums and fairs. We want to see it all, photograph it all, remember it all. But an artist, while crafting an exhibition, thinks beyond himself. This is a gift. The word art itself means that, an especial ability, or to walk towards something. In numerous installations, I realized that related objects were disposed in complete opposite spaces, so you could appreciate one thing at a time. It was an invitation to live in the present moment. That is the only way things can be built, one at a time. Christian Marclay’s installation, 48 War Movies, proposed me these question, “what do you hear? what do you choose to hear?”. In the other hand, my experience at the Indonesian Pavilion presented me with the following phrase as a gift “but if life seems to change at a much quicker pace”, answering the question “is it beyond doubt that all knowledge begins with experience?”. I said Yes. Life, after all, is nothing but a beautiful hand-stitched fabric of layered present moments mend together. The sensibility to expose relevant themes using delicate mediums is something only art can do.

The labyrinth is tapering until it reaches its center, where ideas and values met and talk among each other. Several elements like the symmetrical and colored stripes of Frank Gehry, part of the collateral events at the Espace Louis Vuitton, caught my attention in other works of art, to mention again Ryoji Ikeda. I kept thinking, are we trying to fit into the grids of life? Suki Seokyeong Kang's works, aesthetically beautiful, so neatly arranged and aligned, impeccably attractive, remitted me to the Instagram image-editing screen. Gehry intense colors, which reflected rainbows on the skin of those delighting themselves with the colorful sky at the Espace, were seen once more on the vibrant installation designed by Alex Da Corte. A pop-modern-contemporary art dance, fun and beautiful to immerse in. But could it be that in a world where cities are getting greyer, where propaganda is getting more threatening, we are increasing the contrast to neglect the fact that the real colors of our reefs and nature are, indeed, threatened? By us! The sisters Christine and Margaret Wertheim and all those who collaborated with them on their meticulous project wouldn’t let us forget. Not to mention plants, the vegetable kingdom, the green, what we’ll might not have in few centuries for us to get future reference for the new Pantone color palette. This couldn’t be better proposed but in Elsewhen from Philippe Parreno. His installation also at the Espace Louis Vuitton, could easily be displayed at the Triennale di Milano, in Broken Nature. Right now I activate the powers of imagination to teleport myself from Venice’s alleys to the cozy cortili of Milano.

The synchronicity of themes, the questionings proposed by both exhibitions, May You Live In Interesting Times and Broken Nature, make me believe that Paola Antonelli and Ralph Rugoff had a cup of tea together to develop both concepts. Broken Natures invites us to reevaluate our human broken nature, presenting art and design that makes us understand we’ve crossed some boundaries between us and the other, and us and nature, while La Biennale 58th, rise the questioning about what is a border, and at the same time, deconstructing its existence. After all, it is impossible to keep what time will, invariably, destroy. Even our interpretation and understanding, which by nature are always open for change.

“Some bonds may be broken beyond repair”, so it might as well be time for us to repair the meaning of borders. As Da Vinci would say, for over 500 years, “in learning how to see, we realize everything connects with everything else.” Our fear of big changes unable us to let go on functions that no longer serve us, as in Anemos, artwork by Liliana Moro, in the Italy Pavilion, a hound, in its purest animal instinct, having to choose between its desires for a flying leave, or the balance to stay alive while in front of an abyss. Anemos from Greek means, wind, whirl, passion, change. Not only our current time is interesting, but all times, since ever. Change is the only certainty we have, it is intangible and invisible, but yet, interesting.

I open my eyes. I’m floating on the waters of Venezia.

By Lunna Pigatto