By Youmna Yarak | Staff Writer

The Venice Biennale (La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The Biennale has been organized every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of its kind. The Art Biennale (La Biennale d’Arte di Venezia), is one of the largest and most important contemporary visual art exhibitions in the world. So-called because it is held biannually, it is the original biennale on which others in the world have been modeled.

The International Exhibition takes place in the Central Pavilion (Giardini) and in the Arsenale, including 213 artists from 58 countries; 180 of them participated in 2022 for the first time in the International Exhibition. 1433 works and objects were on display, and 80 new projects are conceived specifically for the Biennale Arte. The Giardini houses 30 permanent national pavilions, property of the individual countries which is managed by their ministries of culture. Fun fact- The assignment of the permanent pavilions was largely dictated by the international politics of the 1930s and the Cold War.

The 59th International Art Biennale ran from 23 April to 27 November 2022. The 2022 edition of the Biennale surrounds the theme “The Milk of Dreams”, which takes its title from a book by Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) in which the Surrealist artist describes a magical world where life is constantly re-envisioned through the prism of the imagination. It is a world where everyone can change, be transformed, and become something or someone else.

The Exhibition “The Milk of Dreams” takes Leonora Carrington’s otherworldly creatures, along with other figures of transformation, as companions on an imaginary journey through the metamorphoses of bodies and definitions of the human.

As part of the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, the Lebanese Pavilion, located in the main hall of the Arsenale, sheds light on contemporary Lebanese creation and promotes the country through its art and culture.

The Lebanese pavilion is based on the theme “The World in the Image of Men”, where two artists: Danielle Arbid and Ayman Baalbaki showcase their work distinct from one another, each with its own economy, subject, history and codes, yet linked by a theme that has no borders. Their art responds to one another, putting into space the perpetual action of the human imagination on the reality of the world.

The streets of Beirut inspired both Ayman Baalbaki’s monumental and ambitious installation, Janus Gate, and Danielle Arbid’s turbulent video, Allô Chérie. The two artists dialogue with the polysemic urban nature of this city that embodies as much Lebanon as the rest of the world.

It is represented as the center of the upheavals and emotional instability of our technological interaction with reality.

Ayman Baalbaki has created a two-sided installation that depicts a fragmented Beirut. Like the Latin god “Janus”, it constantly oscillates between past and future, between threats and promises, facades and backdrops, peace and war.

Echoing this notion of a fragmented Beirut, Danielle Arbid’s film Allô Chérie portrays, in its own way, a distorted sense of space and time. Her images, shot with a mobile phone, accentuate this and reveal the increased competition between the physical and virtual worlds. Danielle Arbid takes us on a car ride around Beirut with her own mother, who is in a frantic search for money. Given the current crisis in Lebanon, it is as intimate as it is political. We can see the panorama of Beirut through the windshield, further reinforcing the ambiguity between public and private realms.

In light of the current situation in Lebanon, the political aspect of these two works is all the more justified. They both depict the contradictions and challenges plaguing the country. The frantic race for money is inseparable from the violence raging in Lebanon today. The anguish surrounding Lebanon’s economic and political collapse is becoming increasingly visible. In their own ways, both artists expose the true nature of Lebanon, in all its beauty and chaos, and present it on the international stage.

As Lebanese artists are exposing their work in renowned international exhibitions, and the Pavilion’s exhibition at the Art Biennial 2022 contributed to the creation of a program that is permanent, honorable, and predominant in the artistic landscape; this couldn’t but bring hope to the Lebanese people, and showcase our country on a bigger scope.