Nordic Countries Pavilion at Venice Biennale of Art - Arsenale, Castello - City of Venice
Exhibition in progress from
April 20th to November 26th 2024
The 60th Biennale Arte will open to the public on April 20. But on the 17th, 18th and 19th there will be the various events and collateral events that always enliven
suddenly Venetian artistic life. The awards ceremony will take place the day of opening to the public.
The title of the 60th edition of the Art Biennale is Foreigners Everywhere - Foreigners Everywhere.
The exhibition will be divided into between the Central Pavilion in the Giardini and the Arsenale, including 213 artists from 88 nations. There are 26 Italian artists, 180 first participations in the International Exhibition, 1433 works and objects on display, 80 new productions.
Go to the page of the 60th Venice Art Biennale
Curator of the 60th Venice Art Biennale
The 2024 edition is curated by Adriano Pedrosa.
Adriano Pedrosa, curator of the 60th Venice Art Biennale
– Adriano Pedrosa (born 1965) is a Brazilian curator. He is the artistic director of the São Paulo Art Museum (MASP) and the 2024 Venice Biennale.
Nordic Countries Pavilion at 60th Biennale Arte of Venice
The title of the exhibition at the Nordic Countrise Pavilion is The Altersea Opera.
Artists: Lap-See Lam con Kholod Hawash e Tze Yeung Ho.
Curators: Asrin Haidari.
Commissioner: Gitte Ørskou, Moderna Museet, Leevi Haapala, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art / The Finnish National Gallery, Ruben Steinum, Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA)
Seat: Nordic Countries, Giardini - Venice
Press Release of Sami, Nordic Countrise Pavilion
Vast ocean beneath a misty sky. A creature of both
water and land is praying to the sea goddess Ma-Zhou
when he accidentally summons a dragon ship which
takes him on a journey beyond time and space.
For the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, the Nordic
Countries Pavilion invites us to embark on a journey aboard a spectral dragon
ship which occupies the light and open architecture of Sverre Fehn’s meditative
masterpiece in the Giardini of the Biennale, Venice.
The 38 metre long bamboo structure, which extends beyond the confines of the
Pavilion, is book-ended by a huge and ornate dragon’s head prow and tail,
which has voyaged from its mooring on the frozen waters of the Stockholm
Archipelago to the Venetian Lagoon.
Conceived and conceptualised by Swedish artist Lap-See Lam, and realised in
collaboration with Norwegian composer Tze Yeung Ho and Finland-based Iraqi
textile artist Kholod Hawash, The Altersea Opera is a poetic exploration of the
existential implications of displacement and belonging which veers between the
real and the imaginary.
Visitors become passengers as they cross the threshold into the skeletal vessel,
powered by magical sails made of stories and filled with mythological water
creatures trying to find their way back to the places of their past. A richly
layered audio-visual installation, The Altersea Opera is inspired by the spirit of
the Red Boat Opera Company – the travelling opera troupe which popularised
Cantonese opera in the 19th century.
Lap-See Lam’s research for the creation of the opera’s dragon ship took her to
Hong Kong, and she has worked closely with master bamboo scaffolder Ho
Yeung Chan. For centuries, bamboo scaffolding has played an important role in
the cultural and architectural history of the region, and has been used to build
temporary stages for Cantonese opera, a celebrated art form in Guangdong
province in southern China.
The dragon ship is inspired by Floating Restaurant Sea Palace, a three-storey
vessel built in Shanghai and towed to Gothenburg in 1991. When the business
failed, it took on an afterlife as a ghost ship at the Gröna Lund theme park,
where Lam discovered it in a dilapidated state before it was moved to its
present home in a remote boatyard.
At the centre of the installation, and brought to life by a film shot on board the
Sea Palace, we find Lo Ting – half fish, half man – a figure from Hong Kong
mythology reimagined across the passage of time through Lam’s script that
tells the tale of his longing to return to a former home, Fragrant Harbour – only
to find it transformed beyond recognition.
The haunting composition by Tze Yeung Ho, which combines extended playing
techniques with baroque ornamentation, is performed with an eclectic array of
instruments. The piece blends the libretto written by Lap-See Lam (with
contributions by Ivan Cheng as Future Lo Ting) with poetry, lullabies, and pop
songs that draw on the artists’ diverse cultural histories. Kholod Hawash's textile
works form a sculptural installation in the Pavilion. Her embroideries conjure a
distinctive world of motifs, sewn stitch-by-stitch through jodaleia and tatreez
(Arabic for quilting and embroidery), with elements from folktales and
archaeological landscapes.
The Altersea Opera is curated by Asrin Haidari, Curator of Nordic Contemporary
Art at Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
Sweden - through Moderna Museet - is the principal commissioner and manager
of the Nordic Countries Pavilion 2024, in collaboration with the Office for
Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) and the Finnish National Gallery Kiasma
(Museum of Contemporary Art).
Moderna Museet invited Lap-See Lam to create an ambitious multi-modal
installation. In collaboration with curator Asrin Haidari, Lam extended the
invitation to Norwegian composer Tze Yeung Ho and Finnish textile artist
Kholod Hawash, and an international ensemble of collaborators ranging from
singers, costume designers and filmmakers to interpreters and a certified
bamboo scaffold engineer.
Useful information for the visit
Hours:
Gardens from 10.00 to 19.00. Arsenale from 10.00 to 19.00 (from 10.00 to 20.00 on Friday and Saturday until September 30th). Closed on Mondays (except April 22, June 17, July 22, September 2, September 30, October 31, November 18).
Tickets: please visit the official website.
Phone: +39.041.5218711; fax +39.041.2728329
E-mail: [email protected]
Web: Biennale
of Venice |
