While Patti Smith surrenders, the Venice Art Biennale is unleashed

VeniceWhere God invites, everyone has a place. Patti Smith, who still sings that Jesus died for someone's sins, but not hers, now glosses the virginity of the Virgin Mary in a poem that can be heard in the Vatican pavilion of the Venice Art Biennale. To hear Smith, and about twenty other artists, including Brian Eno, FKA Twigs, Dev Hynes, Terry Riley, and Jim Jarmusch, you have to get away from the center of Venice and go to the paradisiacal Mystical Garden of the Carmelites of Venice, one of the least crowded corners of the city, just behind the train station. The trip, despite the rain these days, is worth it. The proposal is by star curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, it is titled The ear is the eye of the soul andis inspired by Hildegard of Bingen, the great mystic, scientist, composer of the 12th century. The pavilion staff hand out headphones at the entrance, and the visit consists of walking through the garden in silence listening to the twenty or so works, among which there are also those by musicians who delve into spirituality such as Meredith Monk, Kali Malone, and Charlemagne Palestine.

Patti Smith's voice begins to sound in a small chapel where there is an image of the Virgin Mary. The Vatican pavilion, by the way, has another part in the church where they were installed during the last Architecture Biennale, that of Santa Maria Ausiliatrice, where the intervention carried out by the Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao and the Catalans Maio, who are back at the Biennale with the project for a monastery in Germany, can still be seen. One of the highlights of this other part is the working material for an Alexander Kluge project on Hildegard of Bingen that remained in the drawer.

At the other end of the Vatican pavilion, the women from two of this edition's standout pavilions confront the public like a punch. In the Austrian pavilion, the radical Florentina Holzinger, who has sold out tickets for the next edition of the Grec Festival in Barcelona, opens the exhibition with the motto “I live in your streams”. It is the first time she has brought her research on water to an exhibition context, and she does so in a theme park

In the Danish pavilion, Maja Malou Lyse, with Chus Martínez as curator, subverts the imagery of porn based on the thesis that watching porn with augmented reality glasses improves semen quality. In videos full of humor, four adult film actors take over a laboratory. Another part of the project is the filming of university students dressed as sperm to mock the loss of sperm quality. These latter are scientists who follow fertility expert biologist Shanna Swain, who asserts that sperm is codependent on microplastics. "Everyone agrees in this universe of fiction and science, and also of entertainment, because Maja Malou Lyse's interest in porn is very similar to the interest Calder or Picasso might have had in the circus: this type of belonging to capitalist entertainment, but without belonging to society; at the same time that they are inside, they are not inside," states Chus Martínez. "It is not a film about porn, it is with porn, so we have no sensation of being outside, but rather we are inside with them," she warns.

On the other hand, for Martínez, the Danish pavilion, titled Things to come –a play on words that can be translated as "Cosas para escurrirse" (Things to slip away with)–, is a challenge to the growing conservatism and self-censorship in the art world. "The celebration of many things that are very controversial on many levels and that are in the public space has disappeared. This also has to do with how we have adapted to the fact that we know that many cultural consumers are from wealthy Middle Eastern countries, and we have adapted to that gaze that self-censors you and makes you not show it because it will make them uncomfortable," says Martínez.