Lebanon
"A Roof for Silence" explores the theme of community living through the concept of emptiness in architecture, poetry, painting, and music. It is a project that gained deeper meaning due to the turbulence in Lebanon last year. The project reflects on contemporary social and spatial challenges and offers a reflection on the necessity of emptiness and silence. The installation is centered around a central construction designed to host a series of paintings by Etel Adan, which form a cycle of poetry. The project also involves the participation of Lebanese and French artists such as Paul Virilio, Alain Fleischer, and Fouad Elkoury.
Supermarket sweep… the Latvian pavilion which has been transformed into a minimart.
This contribution brings a little levity to the long trek through the halls of the Arsenale.
Choice as the basis of architectural process, the pop aesthetics emphasizing the languages of consumption as in Hamilton or Warhol: everything is structured by the dynamics of commerce.
Presented as a supermarket, its "products" feature the text from every national biennale exhibit from the last decade, boiled down to its essence through Al. It sticks a pin into the whole ball of hot air. Thank you for that.
Funny thing about designing one liners is they aren't good unless you follow them to the utter end with utmost seriousness lol. That's why I loved the Latvian pavilion this year!
Welcome to T/C Latvija, surely the most instagrammed installation of this edition of the Biennale
Latvia is reopening the archive boxes once again, reminding us (including the Biennial Presidency) of everything that has already been thought up and invented, and inviting us to place the most urgently needed products in the basket, to combine them with one another, and ultimately consume all the knowledge.
Fun, colourful and thought-provoking, it offers a tongue-in-cheek moment to the Arsenale sequence...