BERLINARTLINK: Exhibition // Top 6 at the Venice Biennale
In the grandiose but noticeably crooked space of the Palazzo Barbaro, visitors can find a Collateral Event titled ‘The Union of Fire and Water.’ The beautiful historic building now houses the multiple channel video and sculpture installation by Almagul Menlibayeva and Rashad Alakbarov. The artists explore how architecture withstands, sustains and traces major cultural conflicts, exchanges, and transformations of history through the example of the Mukhtarov’s Palace in Azerbaijan.
A representative of the superimposition of two cities – Azerbaijan and Venice – the Mukhtarov Palace was built in 1912, inspired by the Venetian Gothic style. Over the course of the last century, the building withstood a series of significant transformations and several changes to its function and ownership. A beautiful and memorable installation, the many-layered narrative of the space is unfolded in a complex exploration of cultural plasticity. http://www.berlinartlink.com/2015/05/15/exhibition-top-6-at-the-venice-biennale/
Selected interviews:
contact: almagul2@gmail.com
Almagul Menlibayeva
Almaty-Berlin
Artists Almagul Menlibayeva and Rashad Alakbarov, Soundtrack by OMFO
Curator Suad Garaeva
CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRAL ASIA / KAZAKHSTAN
View of the installation at Palazzo Barbaro, Venice
Art Perspective into Central Asia's Post-Socialist Era
photography, video installation,digital MULTIMEDIA
All The World's Futures represents - in a sense - the third chapter in a research process engaged by La Biennale di Venezia with Illuminations (2011) and The Encyclopedic Palace (2013) to explore the benchmarks that can help us formulate aesthetic judgments on contemporary art, a “critical” question following the demise of the avant-gardes and “non-art”.
With the exhibition curated by Okwui Enwezor La Biennale observes the relationship between art and the development of the human, social, and political world, as external forces and phenomena loom large over it. Our aim is to investigate how the tensions of the outside world act on the sensitivities and the vital and expressive energies of artists, on their desires and their inner song.