Curator Cecilia Alemani has taken the helm at the largest art exhibition in the world&mdash;the Venice Biennale&mdash; and brings women and non-binary artists to the center of the conversation.

After serving as director of High Line Art in New York for 11 years, the Milan-born curator Cecilia Alemani is now the first Italian woman&mdash;and the fifth woman ever&mdash;to be appointed Curator of the prestigious Venice Biennale in the exhibition&rsquo;s 127 years of history. Alemani previously curated Italy&rsquo;s national pavilion at the 2017 edition of the Biennale, and in her position as this year&rsquo;s artistic director, plans to put previously underrepresented artists at the forefront, with women and non-binary artists= making up over 80 percent of the exhibition.

L&rsquo;OFFICIEL: How would you describe this year&rsquo;s Venice Biennale?
 CECILIA ALEMANI: A Biennale consistent with my way of curating&mdash;attentive to different voices. It always surprises me to see how in Italy we are still amazed by a phenomenon that is part of everyday life in America. After all, in 2007 no one was upset when Robert Storr presented a Biennale made up of 80 percent male artists. I chose these artists not because they are women, but because I was interested in their works. However, the presence of women in the five historical capsules that I wanted to include in the exhibition as a reconstruction of missing pieces in the history of the Biennale was more intentional. The idea comes from The Disquieted Muses, the exhibition on the Biennale&rsquo;s archives set up in the Central Pavilion in 2020, which was curated by all the directors of the six artistic sectors of the event&mdash;I was head of the art section. Five exhibitions to be understood as a constellation capable of thoroughly exploring certain themes from a historical point of view, to offer connections even where the influence is not necessarily evident. A historiography built on symbiotic relationships, sympathies, and sisterhoods.

I choose&nbsp;these artists not because they are women,&nbsp;but because I was&nbsp;interested in their works.

L'O: The title of the exhibition, The Milk of Dreams, is particularly evocative. Is it a choice based on the concept, or on your affinity for Leonora Carrington [the Surrealist painter who wrote a children&rsquo;s book with the same title]?
CA: Surrealism has always interested me, even though I mostly learned about male artists. In the last five years, the protagonists of Surrealism have been the subject of an ever-growing interest, culminating in Fantastic Women, the exhibition held at the Louisiana Museum in Humlebaek, Denmark in 2020. This increased interest has led to a widening of the boundaries of Surrealism to North Africa and Central America. I was not familiar with Carrington&rsquo;s books, although in general I like to discover the literary side of artists. I discovered this book in particular almost at the end of the organization of the exhibition, and it seemed to me ideal as the title conveyed a lot of what I wanted to say.

L&rsquo;O: In your introduction to the theme of this Biennale you draw a scenario of a widespread sentiment among artists and more generally typical of our time in which &ldquo;the very survival of humanity is threatened.&rdquo; If the sense of fragility and instability engendered by the COVID pandemic has certainly influenced the works presented, does the aggression of Russia on Ukraine charge these contents with further resonance?
 CA: Obviously the exhibitions and works were conceived before this brutal and meaningless war broke out. But the very fact that there could be someone like Putin who takes hold of and invades a neighboring sovereign state is a striking example of the hubris of the man who thinks he is dominating the universe and, unfortunately, updates the themes of the exhibition.

Cecilia Alemani photographed by Federico Ciamei

L&rsquo;O: Also in your introduction, you underline that one of the guiding concepts of this Biennale is &ldquo;to question the presumed universal idea of a white and male subject as the measure of all things.&rdquo; What do you think is the most impactful work of the exhibition?
CA: The installation by Delcy Morelos, a Colombian artist who is covering the span of the Corderie di terra, building a large labyrinth that reminds us that we all come from the earth. There is a very strong smell of spices, tobacco, and cocoa mixed with humus. The inspiration is &ldquo;The Earth Room,&rdquo; Walter De Maria&rsquo;s 1977 installation, an apartment on Wooster Street in Soho filled with earth. But Morelos is also inspired by the cosmologies of the people of the Andes and the Amazon, giving life to an extremely powerful work.
L&rsquo;O: What do you think is the function of the Biennale today?
 CA: The Biennale is both an institution&mdash;Venice is the oldest in history&mdash;and a snapshot of what is happening in the cultural world. We go there to see the latest trends and new movements, but its mission is also to absorb the shocks of history. Think about the editions immediately after the great wars; they are a reflection of the climate that generated them. I am a supporter of national pavilions&mdash;a highly-criticized exclusively Venetian characteristic&mdash; but which for me represent a fantastic strength, an entry point to artistic scenes such as that of the Philippines or Namibia, or other geographical areas often excluded from international circuits.

Mire Lee&rsquo;s sculptural installations are often unsightly and heavily material, most often reminiscent of intestines or dissected body parts that exude liquids that allude to bodily fluids. Despite the feelings of repulsion, her works come to life with movements that attract viewers instantly engaged by the mechanical and visceral lexicon: cascades of offal combine with kinetic devices composed of industrial materials such as silicone tubes, chains, concrete, and steel structures contrasted with the consistency of glycerin splashes, sticky liquids, natural clay, and the audiovisual languages of video. In its entirety, the artist&rsquo;s compositions create atypical entities and dysfunctional organisms that move away from the canons of objective beauty. Detached from all kinds of social media, the contemporary artist prefers anonymity: she lives and works between Amsterdam and South Korea and has a degree in sculpture and media art from the National University College of Fine Arts. Her creations have been exhibited in major institutions: the Art Sonje Center in Seoul, Lily Roberts in Paris, the Art Institute in Utrecht, and last year she was included in the Future Generation Art Prize list. Lee&rsquo;s latest exhibition of her work &ldquo;H.R. Giger &amp; Mire Lee&rdquo; at the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin is a dialogue between Lee&rsquo;s apparatus and the xenomorphic creatures of Swiss artist H.R. Giger, such as the renowned &ldquo;Necronom IV,&rdquo; the erotic diaries and sketches that inspired the creatures in Ridley Scott&rsquo;s Alien. Sexuality, corporeality, and technology coexist permanently in the macro area that analyzes the relationship between human beings and technology at the Biennale. Her work at the exhibition is a set of cells animated by the excited gestures of a machine that recalls the digestive system of an animal.
&ndash; Simone Veruta.

”Horizontal Forms,” 2020, by Mire Lee

Mira Lee

&ldquo;I was going through a very difficult personal period, I felt extremely limited physically and, consequently, mentally,&rdquo; says the artist Chiara Enzo, discussing what led her to an artistic practice. &ldquo;I wondered, what was the reason for the suffering that these constraints brought with them? How could I find meaning in what was happening to me? Desperate for an answer, I encountered my own concept of existence. In contrast to the widespread representation of the demiurge artist who creates great works and has a great vision of the whole, I focused on a different reading of reality. Couldn&rsquo;t I embrace it all? I shifted my attention to something more tangible: my body. The skin, our edge, what separates &lsquo;you&rsquo; from the outside. Thus began my exploration and, consequently, my fragmented narration of the world.&rdquo; An intimate and painstaking analysis of the present and an exaltation of man&rsquo;s vulnerability through works with a high emotional content, Enzo&rsquo;s paintings are the overwhelming proof of the continuing evolution of the art of painting. &ldquo;Although in Italy there is still this legacy of thought, I don&rsquo;t worry about it. Painting has already been defined several times as a dead language, yet it has always been reborn,&rdquo; says the artist. Enzo&rsquo;s works have the ability to lay bare the human soul simply by deepening a detail, all in an extra-small format. &ldquo;There are various contributing causes that led me to work on such a small scale. Being an extremely introspective person, I have always detached myself from too-large works that impose themselves on the viewer. The goal of my work is to attract without constraints, I want to create an active relationship between the work and the observer: even just the fact that you have to (or want) to get closer to observe it better, causes movement to be created around it.&rdquo; The goal is to create a small window that yearns for something elusive: &ldquo;Imagination is the key element: there is a missing character that everyone must complete for themselves. This sense of absence makes each work with its apparent incompleteness&mdash;recall the others. There is a very close link between one painting and another; one can also conceive of my work as a single perennially incomplete work.&rdquo; Enzo considers participating in the 59th Venice Biennale to be a big leap. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never participated in such an important event, especially a Biennale like this one, with its strong representation of women and other minorities! I know and respect the work of the curator Alemani, her ability to dig into history and look at different paths. Despite finding that the world of contemporary art is still extremely male-dominated, this new chapter is certainly an excellent step forward.&rdquo;
In Venice, Enzo presents an elaborate reflection on the human body and its metamorphosis. &ldquo;There is a certain fluidity, it can be looked at from several points of view and some aspects could fall within the other issues addressed by the exhibition. I let myself be carried away by the mediation we experience of our physicality: nowadays everyone lives their corporeality indirectly, mediated by photography, images, and social media. This is why I worked with different types of video and photographic frames, which best reflect the contemporary concept of &lsquo;body.&rsquo;"
&ndash; Margherita Meda

”Project in progress - Installation for the collective 777 in Fondo a Destra, Venice,” 2013-2018, by Chiara Enzo

Chiara Enzo

Precious Okoyomon thrives on chaos. The artist, who builds large-scale installations utilizing unpredictable, natural materials, creates portals to new environments&mdash;an introduction into their dreamlike world. Recurring elements include the earth, the sun, wool and clay dolls, stuffed bears, trees with dangling nooses, and culinary experiments designed to challenge the limits of our comfort zones.
&ldquo;I grew up in a house imbued with a strong religious sense. As a child I was obsessed with Christian mysticism; I was devoted to the point of writing prayers in the form of poetry which I then went to bury in the woods,&rdquo; says the artist. Born in London, Okoyomon spent their early childhood with their mother in Lagos, Nigeria, and then moved to the US at the age of 7&mdash;first to Houston and later Ohio. Okoyomon then studied philosophy in Chicago before moving to Brooklyn in 2017. The artist won the Frieze Artist Award in 2021, and recently exhibited at the Aspen Art Museum and the Luma Foundation in Arles.
Among Okoyomon&rsquo;s most impactful works is &ldquo;Earthseed,&rdquo; presented in 2020 at the Museum f&uuml;r Moderne Kunst&rsquo;s Zollamt in Frankfurt. The artist filled a former customs office with topsoil and planted an expanse of kudzu plants, considered invasive in the US. The plant was originally introduced to the American South from Asia in the late 19th century as a solution to earth eroded by the intensive cultivation of cotton. It quickly acclimated to its new environment, growing rapidly and suffocating other native species, becoming known as the &ldquo;vine that ate the South.&rdquo; Though kudzu has become a warning of the danger of taking species out of their respective environments, for Okoyomon&mdash;who needs &ldquo;to stay in the spiral of chaos to keep producing new magic&rdquo;&mdash;the plant is also a positive symbol of nature&rsquo;s chaotic resilience. For this year&rsquo;s Venice Biennale, Okoyomon utilizes sugar cane for the first time, together with kudzu. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s an installation inspired by a musical; a project that had a long gestation phase, about two years, created together with my dear friend Gio Escobar&mdash;an extraordinary composer&mdash;and a jazz band,&rdquo; explains the artist. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a very special project with protective black figures made of wool, earth, and blood, and a river of black algae that feeds the sugar cane fields. My work is a long process. I work with the earth, and nothing grows overnight. The Venice Biennale is a very special occasion, a kind of time capsule. I titled the work &ldquo;To See the Earth Before the End of the World.&rdquo; I think this is really a very special moment, in which we all ask ourselves: &lsquo;Where are we now? What binds us to others? What will happen?&rsquo; After the Venice opening, Okoyomon will return to several works in progress. First on the ever-changing garden at the Aspen Art Museum, then on the creation of a forest, which the artist estimates will take four years.
&ndash;Fabia Di Drusco

”Open circle Lived Relation (detail); Resistance is an atmospheric condition,” 2020, by Precious Okoyomon

Precious Okoyomon

PHOTO ASSISTANT: Martina Giammaria STYLING ASSISTANT Cecilia Corsetti

The Milk of Dreams: Cecilia Alemani

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