The Argentine artist La Chola Poblete was awarded an honorable mention at the Venice Art Biennale, which opened this Saturday, and becomes the first queer artist to be awarded in this competition.
The special mention of the exhibition reads “He engages in a critical game with histories of colonial representation from a trans indigenous perspective. His multipurpose art – which includes watercolours, textiles and photography – resistsexoticism of indigenous women while insisting on the power of sexuality.”
“I hope to open other doors so that other people like me can conquer spaces and free themselves from labels,” said the artist upon receiving the award.
La Chola Poblete, works with performance, video art, photography or painting, recovers, through ‘queer’ imagery, the ancestral knowledge of the territories of Latin America, and with her work in the Argentine pavilion of the Biennale denounces abuse and prejudice against indigenous people populations, as well as stereotypes of native peoples.
The Golden Lion of the Biennial went to the Mataaho Collective, formed by Maori artists Bridget Reweti, Erena Baker, Sarah Hudson and Terri Te Tau.
“We thank (the Brazilian curator of the Biennale) Adriano Pedrosa for having so many queer and indigenous voices expressed in this Biennale, it is important to have an expressive platform in Venice,” the artists said, dedicating the prize “to our families, who worked so hard for us to be here.
Nigerian Karimah Ashadu received the Silver Lion at the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale while the Australian pavilion received the Golden Lion for its monumental family tree drawn in chalk.
The second mention went to the artist of Palestinian origin Samia Halaby, 87 years old, pioneer of digital art, while the special mention for national participation went to the Republic of Kosovo
The Golden Lions of the race went to the Turkish artist Nil Yalter, pioneer of the global feminist movement, and to Anna Maria Maiolino, born in Italy, Calabrian, and emigrated to Brazil.
“Art is an adventure of the soul and I have always believed in it”, commented Maiolino, dedicating the award “to Brazilian art”.
The 60th Venice Biennale opened its doors to the public this Saturday and until November 24 to show through art that there are “foreigners everywhere” in an edition marked not only by the war in Palestine, but also by indigenous art, by ‘queer’ artists and decolonisation.
Many of the over 300 artists present in this edition present their works for the first time in a Biennial which, as its curator, the Brazilian Adriano Pedrosa, explained, focuses on “foreign” artists, refugees and immigrants, on the queer universe ‘ -the ‘foreigners’ as the first meaning of that word linked to the LGTBI+ community-, the ‘outsiders’ -on the margins of the official artistic world- or the indigenous people.