‘Non-binary’ artist represents Portugal in Venice
The Portuguese representation at the Venice Biennale, an installation by the visual artist Pedro Neves Marques (curated by João Mourão and Luís Silva), was inaugurated yesterday. Entitled Vampires in Space, it is composed of films and poems, and, according to the official page of the Directorate-General for the Arts, «it uses the figure and expectations of what a ‘vampire’ is to address issues of gender identity, sexuality and reproduction queer as well as non-nuclear family forms». Pedro Neves Marques, as highlighted by the weekly Expresso, «is the first [artista visual] non-binary» representing Portugal in Venice.
The choice of this proposal was marked by controversy, but for another reason. The DGArtes decision-making process was accused of being injured by irregularities, after having passed over the project A Ferida / The Wound by artist Grada Kilomba, which had racism as its theme. The controversy was the subject of a movement of protest and news in the national press, with Kilomba supporters particularly targeting the curator Nuno Crespo.
The 59th edition of the oldest of the biennials (whose origins date back to the end of the 19th century), takes as its starting point the book The Milk of Dreams, by surrealist artist and writer Leonora Carrington (1917-2011), and the primacy of imagination . Russia has canceled its participation, while Ukraine will be entitled not only to its pavilion but also to a square in the Giardini, the ‘Piazza Ucraina’.
With a general presence of Cecilia Alemani, one of the brands of this edition is the very strong feminine.
As for the installation Vampires in Space, it is intended to transform «the second floor of Palazzo Franchetti, on the banks of the Grand Canal in Venice, through a set of films, poems and scenography, into a spaceship inhabited by vampires».