Reflections on la Biennale di Venice 2022

The milk of dreams takes its title from a children’s book by Leonora Carrington, in which the surrealist artist tells dreamlike tales of hybrid, mutant creatures that seem to terrify young and old alike. The stories describe a magical world where life is constantly re-envisioned through the prism of the imagination and where everyone can change, be transformed, or become something or someone else. The theme milk of dreams takes on an imaginary journey through the metamorphosis of the body and the definition of the human.

The artworks take forms in different genres from sculpture and paintings to films and VR interactions, showcasing art’s capability to create alternative cosmologies and new conditions of existence that are built on but far beyond current society around the realm of art, sociology, politics, geography, and psychology.

The pressure of technological change, the heightening of social tensions, an ongoing pandemic, and the looming threat of environmental disasters remind us every day that as mortal bodies, we are neither invincible nor self-sufficient, but rather part of a symbiosis web of interdependencies that bind us to each other, to other species, and to the planet as a whole.

Many artists envision the end of anthropocentrism, celebrating a new communion with all the species on the planet. Alienation is the expression of evolution and also of redemption for human hubris. The exhibition is a safe place to embrace eccentricity and distortion of reality, to understand that the course of alienation isn’t necessarily beautiful and graceful but rather brutal or even horrendous. It is homogeneous to the concept put forward by the film Annihilation.

Despite the downsides we are facing, we should always think with optimism because the artists are not trying to reveal who we are, but to absorb the worries and fears of this time and show us who and what we can become.