Venice Art Biennale 2015 – All the World’s Futures – Index

The main entrance of the Venice Arsenale, Photo © Inexhibit, 2015.

Venice Biennale | 56th International Art Exhibition “All the World’s Futures”

Theme

The 56th Venice Biennale of Art is open to the public from May 9 to November 22, 2015.
Celebrating the 120th anniversary of the first Biennale, held in 1895, this year’s edition, entitled All the World’s Futures, is directed by Okwui Enwezor and organized by La Biennale di Venezia chaired by Paolo Baratta.
Born in Nigeria in 1963, Enwezor is the current director of the Haus Der Kunst in Munich, along with being a world-renowned art curator, writer, and teacher.

 The Central Pavilion at Giardini, Photo © Inexhibit, 2015

As usual, the Biennale takes place in its two historical sites, the “Giardini” and the “Arsenale”, but also runs in several other venues across all of Venice, which accommodate national pavilions, collateral events, and special exhibitions. As a whole, All the world’s futures is therefore a coherent itinerary extending from the Giardini’s Central Pavilion to the Arsenale, and across 53 national pavilions.

Okwui Enwezor, the curator of the 56th International Art Exhibition, underlines the traditional role of the Venice Biennale as an event focused on socioeconomic changes and historical breakdowns in art, culture, politics, and economy. A role the Biennale is having since its first edition in 1895 when it pinpointed the new mass movement scenario arisen after the second industrial revolution.

 The Central Pavilion – Hans Haacke, Blue Sail 1964-1965. Photo © Inexhibit, 2015.

Thus, Enwezor felt that this edition of the Biennale should be marked by an urgency: trying to identify and summarize today’s “state of things” both in art and society.
Since the contemporary panorama is extremely articulated and contradictory, Enwezor refused to focus on a single theme, while he proposed instead a multifarious exhibition, composed of multiple contributions which cover a wide period, including several specially commissioned works and cover a multitude of media, languages, and means of expression.

The Arsenale – Kutluğ Ataman, The portrait of Sakip Sabanci, 2014. Photo © Inexhibit, 2015

Therefore, along with the exhibitions at the Arsenale and the Giardini, the core venue of the 56th Biennale is a multipurpose venue in the Giardini Central Pavilion, called The Arena, where lectures, performances, concerts, and theatrical plays will be staged throughout the entire duration of the Biennale.
The program of events staged at the Arena has been conceived to provide different and multiform visions of what modern society was, is, and (potentially) will be; the complete reading of the Das Kapital by Karl Marx will be the “backbone” of all the events programmed here.

The Arena at the Central Pavilion. Photo © Inexhibit, 2015

National pavilions and exhibitions