Venice is an unbelievable mix of tourism, poverty, stink, magic, art, light (and Marghera is always over there).
Today I was walking through Dorsoduro, where there was few people, even less tourists. I ended at Punta della Salute, where there were the Salt depots and now is the New Zealand video installation named Aniwaniwa, a Biennale of Art collateral event (Magazzini del Sale - Dorsoduro 259 - Venezia - Orario: 10-18 - Ingress libero).
Dark. Five suspended carved vessels ‘wakahuia’, each 2.5 metres wide. Mattresses laid out on the floor. Refreshing and relaxing atmosphere(compared to outside great heat). Ah, but to sleep, to dream... no: better. To watch. To feel. To think:
"ANIWANIWA explores the idea of submersion as a metaphor for cultural loss and tells the story of Horahora, a village on the Waikato River where Brett Graham's father was born, which was flooded to create a new dam at Lake Karapiro.
While it tells a very specific and local story, its references are international both in terms of environmental issues, with rising sea levels and global warming, and concerns about cultural loss in an era of globalization. It is its ability to suggest these broader references and to operate at both the global and local level that gives the work its power." -
Bartley and Company Art - Exhibitions 2006: Aniwaniwa
"Exploring the idea of submersion as a metaphor for cultural loss, it examines themes highly pertinent to both the slowly sinking Italian city of Venice and atolls in the Pacific endangered by global warming and environmental change." - NZ exhibition opens at Venice Biennale on 8 June
Shaka, Venice!
ANIWANIWA in Venice
