What to say about the Venice Biennale? One of the world’s most important and prestigious art events – this year, a hot bed of politics and protests, yet also filled with wonderful treasures. It is always a highlight and a key component to understanding what critical issues artists are grappling with today. 

There was a great feeling of excitement as the queue began to snake around the outside of the Giardini on the Wednesday morning. Once we were in, it was clear that politics, not art, was centre stage. Pussy Riot – the feminist protest and performance art group – stood outside the Russian pavilion, which was open for the first time since the Biennale of 2019 – protesting against their inclusion. It was surreal to see these activists blasting music and letting off pink smoke flares, against the back drop of the delicate tinkle of drinks party conversation within the pavilion filled with Russian supporters.

The British pavilion, this year commandeered by Lubaina Himid, was a little underwhelming. I am usually a great admirer of her work and thoroughly enjoyed her Tate show in 2021, but this series of new paintings, plus a sound piece made by Magda Stawarska, felt quite thin. The large paintings were neither moving nor particularly well-executed. Only a wall of painted boat oars raised interesting ideas about what it means to be British, and drilled down on this and Himid’s concept of ‘belonging,’ posing uneasy questions about the movement of people across the world. Elsewhere, in the Japanese pavilion, visitors were confronted by an installation by the artist Ei Arakawa Nash. Two hundred baby dolls, as well as countless bottles and nappies, are scattered around the pavilion. Visitors are then expected to hold them and contemplate the growing fertility crisis in Japan and beyond. It was quite something to see a group of strangers changing nappies in this art space, and I’m not sure if the heavier-than-normal babies were a deliberate mechanism to make us contemplate the weight (physical, emotion, financial) of bringing children into the world. Again, a very surreal experience.

Although the traditional Biennale prize – The Golden Lion – was cancelled this year by the resignation of the committee just days before the opening, the pavilion everyone was talking about was the installation by Austrian performance artist Florentia Holzinger. Titled ‘SEAWORLD VENICE,’ it includes a tank with a filtration system fed by the Biennale’s urinals. Within the tank, a performer, wearing only a scuba mask, is suspended. On the hour, every hour, Holzinger also hoisted herself up inside an enormous bell outside the pavilion, and used her own body as the clapper to ring it.  The relentless chiming of the bell and the physical violence of this act was shocking. Holzinger stresses that her installation is about Venice and its fragile ecology; a sinking city built on water it cannot drink, gradually overwhelmed by the waste of mass tourism.

There was plenty of cheer and respite to be had with the satellite events for the Biennale happening around the city. Miles Aldridge, the brilliant British photographer, installed his ‘15 Minutes of Fame’ photobooth at SMAC, a fantastic, David Chipperfield-designed museum in Piazza San Marco. An artist renowned for his use of the polaroid photograph, Aldridge’s makeshift studio in the museum welcomed a happy host of curators, gallerists, museum directors and art lovers over the week – each given 15 minutes and a variety of props to pose with. Sponsored by the Italian brand Alessi, the images of this happening, which turned the Biennale viewers into the subject of artworks themselves, are fabulous. Elsewhere, my favourite shows turned out to be a retrospective of the Kenyan-British painter Michael Armitage at the Palazzo Grassi, Francois Pinault’s elegant museum on the Grand Canal, and the first room of Jenny Saville’s exhibition at the Ca Pesaro (although it was slightly ruined by an art advisor who was, presumably, trying to sell one of these works to a client with a handheld iphone tripod). The young artist Dani Trew’s exquisite painting ‘Jocasta,’ transformed onto a sail of a historic sailboat, was also an incredible sight to see as it made its way down the Grand Canal. 

Was it a good Biennale? I think in places, yes. Did it feel different to previous iterations? Definitely. In many ways, Venice is such a problematic place to host a summit for international contemporary art; too beautiful and filled with too many treasures of the past. It is a high bar to live up to, and artists participating must feel this weight as they try to work out what to say on this important stage.