facade of La Biennale di Venezia exhibition building
Three Canadian artists – Gabrielle L'Hirondelle Hill, Kapwani Kiwanga and Tau Lewis – are included in a major international exhibition at this year's Venice Biennale that challenges male dominance in the art world.
The exhibition, The Milk of Dreams, organized by Italian-born curator Cecilia Alemani, features 213 artists from 58 countries.
“The presence of a large number of female and gender non-confirming artists challenge the figure of men as the centre of the universe,” New York-based Alemani said in an online media conference earlier this month.
The show includes prominent contemporary and historical artists, such as Americans Barbara Kruger, Nan Golden and Louise Lawler, as well as emerging stars. The show looks at themes related to bodies and their metamorphosis, relationships between individuals and technologies, and the connection between bodies and the Earth.
Hill, a Métis artist born in Comox, B.C., and based in Vancouver, had a solo show last year at the Museum of Modern Art in New York themed around tobacco.
Kiwanga, born in Hamilton, Ont., and now based in Paris, received the prestigious Prix Marcel Duchamp, one of France's highest art honours, in 2020, for her landmark body of work, Flowers for Africa, earlier featured at Vancouver's Or Gallery.
Tau Lewis, a Jamaican Canadian artist based in Brooklyn, exhibited her work last year at the National Gallery of Canada.
Canada's official representative to the biennale is Vancouver artist Stan Douglas, who will exhibit at the Canada Pavilion.
The biennale, which was postponed due to the pandemic, will feature 80 national pavilions when it opens April 23.
For a complete list of participants in The Milk of Dreams, go here.
Source: ArtNet