Meandering Conversations: Venice Biennale
Come along with me as recap my trip to Venice for the Biennale. Please bear with me if I meander too much...this my first vlog.
Hi y’all I hope you enjoy this brief recap of my recent trip to the Venice Biennale. I barely scraped the surface of the experience, especially the deeper conversation I’d like to have on class mobility in the art world. Keep an eye out for a second vlog—I’ll dive deeper into that discussion next time. Below you’ll find a transcript of this video, as well as a link to the hotels I mentioned should you find yourself in Venice anytime soon.
Have you ever been to Italy? Has class mobility ever negatively or positively affected your access to the arts? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
Transcript
I've sat down so many times to write this post about the Venice Biennale and I can't quite convey the ideas that I want to on paper for some reason.
I think it's because what I want to talk about when I talk about the Venice Biennale is class mobility. What does that look like? The Venice Biennale represents, in some ways, a bizzare pinnacle of class.
Every time I sat down to write about that, I felt like I wasn't able to add the nuance that you can have when talking.
So here we are, we're going to do a video post.
In February, my family went to Italy. It was my first visit. My husband had been there before.
We went to the Venice Biennale, which has been a lifelong dream of mine. For those of you who don't know what the Biennale is, it is basically like the art world's fashion week. People from all over the world show up for the Venice Biennale, which only happens every two years.
I mean, we're talking about the museum elites, curators, directors, presidents, major collectors from all over the world… they all ascend upon Venice, Italy for the opening week of this show.
Now if you haven't gone to an art fair or aren't in the art world, you probably won’t know, but most of these art fairs have an official opening date and a “press preview date.”
The press comes, and during this time, there are also a lot of private parties. A lot of people show up early so that they can go to these private parties.
We actually showed up three or four days ahead of time, not because we got invites to any of the parties (not that I don't think I couldn't have gotten some, I still have a wide network of people in the art world from when I was really involved when I lived in LA…) but we were traveling with a two year old, so that was different. Honestly, that’s a whole other conversation: traveling with children and the fact that often, children are not allowed in art spaces….but that’s not for today.
Let me set the scene. If you haven't been to Venice before, you might not know, but in Venice, there are no cars, so to get anywhere, you have to go by boat. Once you land in Venice, the airport kind of drops you off at a boating dock where you can then wait for a public boat to take you to your hotel. Alternatively, you can charter a water taxi. If you have the money, I definitely would recommend planning the water taxi ahead of time.
When we arrived it was raining and of course our banks had blocked our bank accounts, so that took us like an hour to resolve on the phone. We were coming from London, where we had been for three days. When we finally got in line in the rain, poor Riley was so tired. We were the last three people that they let on the boat and I think it's because of the crying bambino.
Once we got on the boat, Riley was so excited, he was shouting the entire time boats, boats, there's boats there.
We took the boat into the dock and then we had to find our hotel from there. It was funny because Stephen was like, “Wow, this is not what it was like when I visited Venice. When I visited Venice, it was mostly just like…dads with their cameras and their sneakers.” To be there during the Venice Biennale, I mean… It was just high fashion artists everywhere. The crowds were art in and of themselves.
It was really weird for me to be in this environment and to re-engage with art as an almost 40 something woman who has been kind of in and out of the art scene since my early 20s. In some ways I feel like I can't help but be that 21 year old in these spaces because that was my first introduction to the art world.
To be there in this space and this culmination of what has been a lifelong dream for me and then to also like see my child there, knowing perfectly well that we are planning on going back again… it really brought up a lot of conversations about what class mobility is, what class is, how it's experienced and also how it's performed to a degree.
I find it really interesting how you now see so many influencers vacationing in Italy and they all seem to live on boats and yachts. There were certainly huge yachts parked at the Biennale that people had just driven up to go see the fair.
It was also a reminder that you don't have to have a yacht to attend these things.
I think one of the benefits of social media and globalization in general is that a lot of these events that were gate kept before are now open to the masses, at least to a degree.
This is a conversation that I want to continue having which is why I couldn't really put it down on paper. In America, oftentimes class mobility also feels like a hamster wheel and you're just constantly working within this capitalistic system.
Art fairs often feel very out of touch. As an attendee, you know, some people can afford the art, some people can't afford the art and there's a wide range of what that can look like. As an artist, you're hoping that people will buy your art. I think that there's a lot of nuance to these conversations.
Back to the trip.
When we landed on solid ground, we checked in at a hotel. We got really lucky actually because we didn't realize we were staying right above a Michelin star restaurant, which was the hotel restaurant. That was nice.
Because we were traveling with Riley, we had to go at his pace. We call it Riley speed. Because of that, we didn't pre book any of the events, but sure enough, there were a lot of events for the public or that were easy to get into ahead of time. So it didn't really matter that we didn't have special invites because they had a lot of activations and installations happening throughout the city. The Venice Biennale is known for its installations. There were some phenomenal installations just within the city itself, even some from previous years that have been there before. That was really wonderful.
What I love about Italian culture is the reminder that it gives you to just slow down. I think that was the biggest takeaway from this European trip; this reminder to slow down and to rest and to enjoy.…to enjoy that cappuccino that you're having in the Palazzo. To take in and drink in all of the beautiful architecture and history. It was absolutely wonderful.
We started out at our hotel, which was right by the Rialto Bridge, which was nice because that's a big tourist attraction but we didn't have to go out of our way to get there. We ended our stay in an Airbnb that was right next to the Biennale.
At the Biennale, I had an opportunity to go into the different pavilions. The Biennale has, I believe, 88 countries represented and each has a pavilion. As you can imagine, it's nearly impossible to see the entire thing in one day. As someone who's been in the art world for a while, I've learned to not try to see everything in one day or to be okay with the fact (which I had to be with this trip), that I just won't be able to see everything.The good thing is that the fair goes for two years. Just because you aren't there on opening weekend doesn't mean that you can't enjoy it at a later date.
If you happen to be in Italy, I would highly recommend that you go and check out the Biennale.
Each country picks an artist that represents some of the things that are happening in their country at that time. It was really interesting to see the different perspectives that have cultural nuance between the different countries.
The Biennale was very eye opening, inspiring and beautiful beyond my wildest dreams.
I hope I didn't rant too long on this video.
Let me know what you think about video content.
Welcome to Meanderings!
Hotels:
Biennale for two years Art appreciation. Cafes on the rain filled canals. Riley days ahead. Slow and easy splash of gondolas. What a framed picture you create.