Emily Prince in the Arsenale at the Biennale

Another view of the Prince piece. You can see that she chose different shades of paper--presumably to represent race. War and artistic responsibility. That is what one writer said about works at the Arsenale. Prince certainly took this responsibility seriously. The painstaking nature of the task--added to by each day's news--must be numbing.

Since I haven't been to the Biennale before, I did not know what to expect. But given the type of space--indoors, not air conditioned, removed from most of the pavilions, I was not surpised that the art was different than what we saw in Giardini. Supposedly this venue houses art that is more lively. And although I saw some different things here, I couldn't call it lively.

Emily Prince - UC Berkeley Artist at the Biennale

Much of the art in the Arsenale was political. And many countires were represented. Judy and I spent a great deal of time looking at and thinking about this work by Emily Prince. On a straightforward level, it consists of the following: a collection of photographs (presumably taken from newspapers) of American servicemen killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. These photos are organized by state or territory and placed in boxes in an elaborate filing system. Small sketches were then made together with name, location, and birth and death dates. She then came to Venice and installed the sketches on the very large wall roughly following a map of the US. The sketches are pinned to the wall. There are more than 3,300 in this show.

El Anatsui in the Arsenale

Two beautiful wall hangings by El Anatsui were seen in the overly warm Arsenale, a non-air conditioned space that housed some of the newer artists and their work. I believe these are constructed from wrappers from wine bottles or bottle caps. Small holes are punched into the pieces and the pieces are attached together by some kind of wire. We marveled at the attention to detail and care that must have been taken to construct this.