After a year’s delay due to the Covid pandemic, the 59th Venice Biennale is a triumph for women artists, who heavily outnumber men in both Cecilia Alemani’s curated exhibition “The Milk of Dreams” and the national pavilion displays.
Marta Pérez García
WASHINGTON, DC The Phillips Collection INVISIBLE, SILENCIO, NO—these are the only words in Marta Pérez García’s poetic installation Restos-Traces. The ghostly assembly of 19 female torsos immediately strikes a nerve.
Rana Begum
LONDON Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery The central sculptural installation in the gallery, No. 1081 Mesh (2021), seems to billow under the domed glass ceiling, acting as a conduit between viewers and the outside world, filtering daylight from the window above and drawing attention to the colored glass.
Building Up Entanglements: A Conversation with Julia Crabtree and William Evans
For British duo Julia Crabtree and William Evans, sculpture and the sculptural experience are less about fixed forms than an irrepressible interest in materials and matter that might appear uneasy or ugly, that might crack under the weight of expectation.
Abdulrazaq Awofeso
BIRMINGHAM, U.K. Ikon Gallery Awofeso takes this blankly ubiquitous material—used for transporting goods around the globe—and imbues it with humanity and character, using a variety of display techniques to evoke the personal and the collective experience of human migration.
Ripple Effects: A Conversation with Angela Two Stars
Angela Two Stars is taking a stand about her Indigenous culture and using the Dakota language to do it. An enrolled member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate (SWO)—a Dakota Plains tribe and part of the Oceti Sakowin Nation—she was born and raised on the Lake Traverse Reservation, located in South Dakota’s northeast corner.
Studio Morison: Designing Pathways To Nature
Silence—Alone in a World of Wounds (2021), created by Studio Morison (Heather Peak and Ivan Morison), resembles a medieval building, or perhaps a shelter from some apocalyptic future in which humans have returned to the land.
Cristina Iglesias
LONDON Royal Academy of Arts Like many of Iglesias’s works, Wet Labyrinth forms a private place in a public space, offering a degree of seclusion and intimacy. It is also a space of memory and imagination.
Unknowable Objects: A Conversation with Niamh O’Malley
Niamh O’Malley, from County Mayo, in the Republic of Ireland, is part of a generation of artists who benefited not only from the pioneering work of artist-led organizations like the Association of Artists in Ireland (AAI) and the Society of Sculptors in Ireland (SSI), but also from the economic boost of the so-called Celtic Tiger, which pumped money into the arts.
Henry Moore
SOMERSET, U.K. Hauser & Wirth Lunar light creates the most unearthly depths and shadows and appears to enlarge silhouettes, its dramatic illusions heightening the sense of wonder and mystery. For Moore, this profound experience at Stonehenge precipitated a career-long investigation into scale, material, volume, and the juxtaposition of art and nature.
