Author Description

Curated by Ralph Rugoff - Director of the Hayward Gallery in London, the program of this year's edition of the Biennale, entitled "May You Live in Interesting Times", comprises the core exhibitions at the Arsenale and the Giardini's Central Pavilion with 79 invited artists, 90 national pavilions (4 of which - Ghana, Madagascar, Malaysia, and Pakistan - participate at the Biennale for the first time), 21 collateral events, and 2 special projects by the Biennale di Venezia - the Mestre Special Project and the Applied Arts Special Project (the latter made in collaboration with the Victoria & Albert Museum in London). 'May You Live in Interesting Times', the title of the 58th Venice Art Biennale, is a fake curse. Cited in the 1930s by British MEP Sir Austen Chamberlain as an ancient Chinese curse he had learned of from a diplomat who had served in Asia, it turned out that such an "ancient Chinese curse," never existed, actually. Yet, it is still used as a rhetorical artifice, today. As Ralph Rugoff says: "This summary sounds uncannily familiar today (...).Yet at a moment when the digital dissemination of fake news and "alternative facts" is corroding political discourse and the trust on which it depends, it is worth pausing whenever possible to reassess our terms of reference."