Venice Biennale: The Art of Communicating Resistance, Resistance as Art

ABSTRACT

This essay examines contemporary art as a tool of political resistance against existing and emerging ideologies as well as controversial and discriminatory cultural norms. On the example of the 2017 Venice Biennale, this research project analyses art, and more specifically, selected nation-specific exhibits, as pieces of critical pedagogy, representative of ideological and cultural resistance. Concentrating on the comparative analysis of art exhibits from US-American, Russian, and German national pavilions, this research project explains what their respective art communicates, what the main messages are, and elaborates on the impact, the salience, and the affect the exhibits have on their numerous audiences today, when the sphere of international and intercultural relations is challenged like never before. This essay further demonstrates that the exhibits challenge and critique the past and the present of their respective national cultures and attempt to refocus and humanize the future in the globalized world.

KEYWORDS:

• Venice Biennale
• art exhibits
• rhetoric of materiality
• political activism
• resistance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Translation from Italian by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager

Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager is Associate Professor of Communication at the Colorado State University. Her research interests are in intercultural communication, international conflict, rhetoric of materiality, intercultural art, and European studies.