Venice Biennale 2021: Here Are All the Artists Confirmed to Represent Their Countries at the Event (So Far)

It’s only three months into 2020 and the influx of emails
announcing which artists representing their respective countries at
the 2021 Venice Biennale are already in full force. The 59th
edition of the show, which will be under the direction of High Line
creative director Cecilia Alemani, will be held from May
through November 2021.

We will keep updating this list as more nations announce their
artists, curators, themes, and venues.

Australia

Artist: Marco Fusinato

Curator: Alexie Glass-Kantor

Venue: Giardini

Fun Fact: A native of Melbourne, Fusinato’s
practice is all about amplifying sensory experiences by blurring
the boundaries between music, sound, and visual art. In a work
shown at the Syndey Biennial, he invited visitors to thwack a
baseball bat attached to a steel chain at a plaster wall. The sound
of bat-on-wall was amplified by hidden microphones the artist
attached to a sound system, turning it up to 11.

Austria

Artists: Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans
Scheirl

Curator: Karola Kraus, director of the Museum
Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien

Venue: Giardini

Fun Fact: In the press announcement, Kraus
noted that the installation would “lack neither humor nor satire,”
something visitors have come to expect in the work of the artists,
who frequently collaborate. The work will include a multitude of
materials including photographs, paintings, video and audio works,
and holograms meant to destabilize “conventional ideas of museum
presentations.”

Knebl worked as a geriatric caretaker for a decade before
turning to visual art, working with the likes of Raf Simons at the
University of Applied Arts. Scheirl has worked in experimental
film, but more recent works are focused on painting. In April 2019,
the duo created a soaring “tower covering” for the facade of the
Vienna City Hall tower while it undergoes restoration, featuring
bright red figures, one seated atop the others shoulders and
reaching up toward the sky to symbolize “an exclamation mark for this open-minded attitude”
of the city.

Canada

Artist: Stan Douglas

Venue: Giardini

Fun Fact: The Vancouver-based artist
creates multi-media installations that blend fact and fiction,
often with diverging narratives that propose alternate realities.
Douglas has shown at the Venice Biennale multiple times, though this is
the first time he’s representing his home country.

Finland

Artist: Pilvi Takala

Curator: Christina Li

Venue: Giardini

Fun Fact: Takala, who was born in
Helsinki, creates video works based on interventions she creates
within mainstream public and private institutions. In The
Stroker, Takala took on the role of a “wellness consultant” at
a popular co-working space in East London, where she was employed
to “provide touching services in the workplace.” The reactions of
workers ranged from obvious discomfort to grudging acceptance of
the atypical intimacy of strangers.

France

Artist: Zineb Sedira

Venue: Giardini

Fun Fact: Sedira is the first artist of Algerian descent to represent
France at the Venice Biennale. Born in Paris, the artist’s work
draws largely on her experiences as the daughter of Algerian
immigrants and raising a child in London’s multicultural Brixton
neighborhood. In works such as Mother Tongue (2002),
the artist acted as an interpreter as her daughter, mother, and
herself attempted to speak to one another in their native
languages.

Since the announcement of her appointment to represent France,
Sedira has been criticized for allegedly having ties
to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which is
a Palestinian-led organization that calls on the country to end its
opposition and oppression of Palestinian citizens. Sedira has denied claims that she is part of the
movement, calling it a mischaracterization of previously
expressed political views.

Great Britain

Artist: Sonia Boyce

Venue: Giardini

Fun Fact: Boyce is the first black woman chosen to represent
Britain in the upcoming biennale, saying in a statement that “you
could have knocked me down with a feather when I got the call.” The
artist is a professor at the University of the Arts in London and
rose to prominence in the 1980s with work that interpreted personal
and more broadly social relationships to race, gender, and
class.

Iceland

Artist: Sigurður
Guðjónsson

Venue: TBD

Fun Fact: The Helsinki-born artist began
his career working in experimental artist-run venues in Reykjavik
with self-described “dark and hypnotically moody videos” that
engage the viewer’s senses, challenging the links between vision
and hearing. The artist often collaborates with musicians, and his
most recent work, titled Enigma, was created in
partnership with composer Anna Thorvaldsdóttir. The work has
been performed around the world by the SpektralQuartet group,
accompanied by a video inspired by the view of fragmented coal seen
through an electron microscope.

The
Netherlands

Artist: Melanie Bonajo

Curators: Maaike Gouwenberg, Geir Haraldseth,
and Soraya Pol

Venue: Chiesetta della Misericordia, Campo
dell’Abbazia 3550, Cannaregio (The
Mondriaan Fund has invited Estonia to make use of the Netherland’s
Rietveld Pavilion at the Giardini for the 2021 Venice
Biennale)

Fun Fact: Bonajo
creates lush videos, photography installations, and
performances heavily influenced by the concept of the divine. A
self-proclaimed eco-feminist, her works explore body politics,
equality, and community, especially how these issues are affected
with the technological advances and an increased sense of
alienation. With colorful images, the artist probes how the
millennial generation’s relationships with nature, domesticity, and
identity have evolved.

New Zealand

Artist: Shigeyuki (Yuki) Kihara

Curator: Natalie King

Venue: TBD

Fun Fact: The Samoan and Japanese artist
Yuki Kihara’s work explores the historic and contemporary
representation of Pacific societies. One of their best known works
is the photographic series called Where do we come from?
What are we? Where are we going? (2013), named after Paul
Gaugin’s painting of Tahiti.

The series is based on staged postcards of the South Seas, in
which they untangle the myth of a Pacific paradise by posing as a
19th-century Samoan woman posed at sites around Samoa in the
aftermath of the devastating 2009 tsunami and 2012 cyclone.

Switzerland

Artist: Latifa Echakhch in collaboration
with composer Alexandre Babel

Curator: Francesco Stocchi

Venue: Giardini

Fun Fact: The Moroccan-born artist
currently lives in Switzerland and has been racking up
international accolades and prizes, including the Prix Marcel
Duchamp in 2013. Echakhch’s work deconstructs symbols and objects
inherently linked to specific cultures and places to upend the
viewer’s assumptions.

The post Venice Biennale 2021: Here Are All the Artists
Confirmed to Represent Their Countries at the Event (So Far)
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