Part of the Angola exhibit in Palazzo Pisani
The Angolan Pavilion for the 56th Biennale di Venezia is titled “On Ways of Travelling,” yet the exhibition more accurately invokes some of the barriers to the freedom of movement that are experienced by many in Angola, and elsewhere in Africa – visas, economic hardship, borders and road traffic. Yet “travel,” in this context, is not only meant to signify physical movement; it also refers to the meeting of disparate worldviews, lifestyles and temporalities, as well as to states of dreaming, desire and longing for change. The subject is nowhere more relevant than the present context in La Biennale di Venezia, an essential destination for international art tourism and an early precedent for the phenomenon of the ‘global exhibition’ of contemporary art.
Part of the Angola exhibit in Palazzo Pisani
The Angolan Pavilion for the 56th Biennale di Venezia is titled “On Ways of Travelling,” yet the exhibition more accurately invokes some of the barriers to the freedom of movement that are experienced by many in Angola, and elsewhere in Africa – visas, economic hardship, borders and road traffic. Yet “travel,” in this context, is not only meant to signify physical movement; it also refers to the meeting of disparate worldviews, lifestyles and temporalities, as well as to states of dreaming, desire and longing for change. The subject is nowhere more relevant than the present context in La Biennale di Venezia, an essential destination for international art tourism and an early precedent for the phenomenon of the ‘global exhibition’ of contemporary art.