Against the Dark

So, after a two-year hiatus from this blog, I’m back!

And I’m doing it in spades, at least that’s the plan…

In 2017, I set up my website after winning a grant to spend time studying visual art. The only stipulation was that I blogged about it.

I sat in this very same spot I am writing now, to ‘pen’ my first post.

I was at the Venice Biennale.

I swore I’d come back.

In 2019 I had my big Endometriosis surgery (see HERE for blog).

In 2021 the Venice Biennale was cancelled because Covid.

In 2022 my Mum was busy dying (see HERE for blogs).

In 2024 I was going to come with my best friend – but she was chronically ill – so we never came.

In 2026… well, here I am!

Cafè La Serra 2026

Venice holds such a special place in my heart.

I think this is my sixth trip – though work trips, in the good old days, were fast and furious, and it may easily be my seventh.

Let’s call it two work trips – one, my first performance of Monteverdi. What a place to start!

Two holidays – Firstly, the memorable trip for my mother-in-law’s 70th. Easy to forget how much we’ve gained from the development of the internet. We booked an Agriturismo on the coast just outside Venice. Get out of the hustle and bustle, lovely family evening meals. 20 minutes on the train, we were told.

We got to the station in the pitch dark. Two olds, my husband, gorgeous (late) brother-in-law and our 5 year old. I don’t know how we thought we would get to the Agriturismo, but nothing had prepared us for the 45 minute walk in the dead of night. No taxi. No street lights. No Google Maps. Plenty of luggage. I don’t know how we did it, to be honest. I only remember the trauma! It wasn’t the highlight of the trip, but maybe this was?

Then, in 2023, after an insanely hard 2022, we decided to take a ‘proper’ holiday. We spent a beautiful day here in Venice, in amongst two weeks of touring northern Italy, a trip of a life-time. Just the three of us – me, husband, son. Bliss.

And then here I am again.

Insanely happy.

I got up at 2:55 am to be here. Unequivocally the earliest I have ever got up to go anywhere, and it’s safe to say I’ve done more than my fair share of early starts.

But the journey was dreamily smooth. From turning the car engine off in the long stay car park to being ‘through’ took a grand total of 20 minutes. If only travelling was always that easy.

In the last few days though, there’s been a lot of time for reflection on my anxiety.

And there’s a lot to reflect on!

In 2017 when I came to the Biennale, I’m pretty certain there just wasn’t the capacity to plan everything beforehand, so there were things that you just got on with. It was par for the course.

In 2018 I went to America to study the life and work of Louise Bourgeois. I do remember being anxious, especially arriving in Brooklyn in the dark, with no idea beyond an address, of where I was staying. And then there was driving a car from upstate NY to Massachusetts… How on earth did I do that without being able to plan every single last detail?!

I really struggle with decision-making. In a paralysing kind of way.

So now I have the capacity to plan every single move of the trip. I can see how long it takes to get from A to B. How much it costs. Where I can get good – but cheap – food. When is the ideal time to visit? Do I really need to book? The list of questions goes on. And on. And on…

And in the last few weeks, slowly but surely, I have asked and answered them all.

We have a timetable. We have goals and aims. We have restaurants – and more importantly Geletarias – all over Venice, all marked on a map. But, crucial to the plan we have no timings. There is no point where we have to be at a specific place. No start times and no end times.

There are still a few non-negotiables. For me, as much art as I can imbibe, the balcony of the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, and I dearly want to visit Rialto Market at its morning peak of activity. That said, early-morning me and realistic me, are still in discussion about the actual chances of this.

We? You spotted that, right? Yes! Cleo, aforementioned best mate, an art therapist and pigment maker – on a plane from Bristol as I type – needs gelato and pigment shops.

So there it is.

The plans have been made. Hours and hours of thoughts and ideas, questions, answers. Sleepless nights. So now, for the next 4 days, there are no questions I don’t have answers for. No unknowns. No plans set in stone. Possibilities? Buckets full. And not an anxiety in sight.

But the cost of that? It felt high in the last few days. Very high. Hyper alert. I need to have thought of everything. And the internet means I can. I can have a solution. I cannot get caught out. I can know our options.

And I can’t help but think that this is the route of a whole lot of people’s problems. Their overwhelm. Their burnout. There is no longer any need to not know. And this was never a problem when we couldn’t have the answers.

I reread my last Venice blogs recently. When I arrived in 2017, I knew it was possible to get to central Venice by water. The woman at the Airport shouted at me as I questioned her about said transport. No, she told me officiously. You get the bus and then the vaporetto from there. I was upset by this. Really upset. Not tears, but an inner feeling of failure. Of ‘wrong again, ffs’. A familiar and so distressing feeling. But I was right. It is perfectly possible. I did it.

So was it worth the effort to know exactly how to do it this time? Follow the very clear signs to Water Transport. Buy a ticket at a blue Alilaguna machine. Get the blue line to Ospedale. Walk from there. 23 minutes. Yes, for sure. But these things add up. They really do.

I digress! Can you digress before you’ve even started?

I want to tell you about the Art.

Well, where to start?!

I started in the Biennale Giardini.

There are 100 participating countries across two main sites.

29 at the Giardini, 25 at the Arsenale and 46 at other locations around Venice.

With every country producing and curating a small or not so small exhibition, you may be able to begin to imagine the overwhelming – but exciting – prospect this visit is.

First? The Great Britain Pavilion. Why not?

The British artist representing us this year is Lubaina Himid.

Himid was one of the leading and pioneering artists in the British Black Arts Movement in the 1980’s. She won the Turner Prize in 2017. The first Black woman to win the prize and the oldest winner at 63.

Her installation in the GB Pavilion is Predicting History: Testing Translation.

‘It’s about our real desire to belong and have a home, and how difficult that is, whoever you are… [The people in the paintings] are not ‘special people’… they are us.’ It’s about choosing to belong – the scenes are ones we recognise. Recalling shared experiences of making, building, cooking, repairing and imagining together. Home, here, is about the persistent act of living despite uncertainty.

Himid has used the idea of Kanga’s throughout her lifetime of work. A kanga is a piece of brightly coloured, East African cloth that is used by women as a wrap, skirt, head-wrap, shawl, apron or baby-carrier. It often has a proverb or message printed on the edge.

Each of the five rooms/paintings in the Pavilion is accompanied by one of these messages. For example, in the painting of the Architects, they are discussing what sort of building they should design. The accompanying picture says ‘Can flies settle here’. These messages, with sound, text and imagery, add an extra layer of dark tension to the bright and vibrant paintings.

The Danish Pavilion has caught a lot of attention. Artist Maja Malou Lyse is the youngest artist ever to curate the Danish Pavilion.

‘Inspired by H.G. Wells and the 1936 sci-fi film Things to Come, the exhibition turns the pavilion into a hybrid space resembling a luxury fertility clinic, a biotech startup waiting room, and a porn set. It investigates declining male fertility and the intersection of pornography, technology, and reproductive science in the year 2045’

The clientele in the room were mostly men taking photos and smirking. This distracted me from what might have been (meant to be?) a more provoking art piece.

But I enjoyed the playfulness of the Hungarian Pavilion. pneuma cosmic – based on fictional research, artist Endre Koronczi’s project was looking at airflow – both ours and the Earth’s. He spent a year walking with a large glass head piece (space suit type helmet) in order to try to find and capture the most important sigh! The space encouraged a meditative state and housed, among other things, the disassembled components from the historic ventilation system of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. There was a lovely feeling of levity and humour, completely disguised in this seemingly serious exhibition.

The other standout pavilion for me was the Nordic Countries (Finland/Norway/Sweden). Their exhibition, How Many Angels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin? weaves Nordic Folklore and fairytales exploring common themes of transformation, resilience and vulnerability.

After the early start, the need to wait up for Cleo’s arrival, and a whole lot more art that I haven’t mentioned, it was time to go find our residence and some food – and obviously my favourite bar to write in.

More news of the trip to follow.

How can you resist?!