Surreal is an apt description of recent years, as the pandemic has upended lives in ways both tragic and absurd, fueled a surge in virtual-reality technologies, and rendered the familiar world unrecognizable. For Cecelia Alemani, artistic director of the 59th Venice Biennale, the worlds imagined through surrealist art and literature reach not only back to events of one century ago when the global disruptions of World War I tore through societies and landscapes with an unprecedented ferocity, but also touch on the present-day crises that are channeled into contemporary culture’s fascination with posthuman identities and a postanthropocentric planet.
Tapping into those historical lineages and contemporary themes, Alemani’s central exhibition is titled
