Khalol Rabah, The Gas Station, 2009, still from 1 hr video. Courtesy of artist; Bruce Nauman, Sex and Death, 1985, neon tubing mounted on aluminium ⓒ VBK, Wien 2006

53rd Venice Biennial: Selected Artists of National Pavilions

7. June – 22. Nov.
Giardini, Venice

Palestine presents the first Palestinian participation at the Venice Biennale showing art works by: Taysir Batniji, Shadi HabibAllah, Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, Jawad Al Malhi, Emily Jacir, and Khalil Rabah. The seven participating artists, commissioned to create new art works, were chosen for their outstanding commitment their art as well as their ability to bridge local and global themes.

They employ diverse techniques including sound installation, multimedia performance installation, site specific work, animation, photography, and video. Their art tackles themes ranging from the epistemology of the concept of biennales to the dialogue of cultures within architecture and urban design, and explores visual perception of objects in the mechanical state. It also examines marginality via the structural geography of the refugee camp, and activates an almost non-exiting community discourse on the colonialist socio-spatial reconfiguration of urban centers.

To insure that Palestinian communities under siege join in celebrating this inaugural exhibition, six Palestinian art institutions in Jerusalem and the West Bank will show duplicates of the art works opening the exhibitions simultaneously with Venice . The Palestinian venues are: A.M. Qattan Foundation, Birzeit University Art Museum , Al-Hoash Palestinian Art Court , International Academy of Art Palestine, Al Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, and Riwaq Center for Architectural Conservation. Exhibition curator is Salwa Mikdadi, an independent curator based in Berkeley and exhibition commissioner is Vittorio Urbani, the Director Nuova Icona.

Artist Bruce Nauman , a pioneer of Post Minimalist video and performance art, will represent the United States at the 2009 Venice Biennale . The exhibition will underscore recurrent themes in Nauman's extraordinary 40-year career with works shown across three prominent locations in Venice : the U.S. Pavilion at the Giardini della Biennale; Università Iuav di Venezia at Tolentini; and the Exhibition Spaces at Università Ca' Foscari. The Philadelphia Museum of Art was chosen as the commissioner for the 2009 United States Pavilion.

Carlos Basualdo, its curator of contemporary art, and Michael R. Taylor, its curator of modern art, will organize the Nauman exhibition. After the museum acquired one of Mr. Nauman's early neon works, “ The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths ” (1967), the curators began considering Mr. Nauman's career and proposed an exhibition of his work for the 2009 Venice Biennale. “Our intention from the beginning was to explore the vast and varied terrain of Nauman's oeuvre, and to examine it in the Venetian context, using the notion of the ‘national pavilion' as a point of departure. We developed partnerships with other institutions, such as the universities, so that the presentation could interlace Nauman's work with the urban structure of the city,” said U.S. Commissioner Carlos Basualdo, the Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Curator of Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Artist Lu Hao and curator Zhao Li were announced as the curator of the China Pavillion at the 53rd Venice Biennale. The 40 yr old artist has participated before in the Venezia Biennale as artist, as well as the San Paolo and Busan Biennale. Lu Hao told reporters in while in France that he wanted to confront Italians with more challenging problems, and discussed mirroring the walls and projecting images from various corners of the pavilion, to create a “gaudy and grotesque site.”