ORevery hour, in Austrian pavilion of the Venice Biennaleone bell rings. Producing this sound is a naked female body, hanging upside down, swinging hitting metal. A powerful and disturbing image: an exposed and functional body, transformed into a gear, deprived of freedom and made into a spectacle. This is just one of the performances by artist and choreographer Florentina Holzinger. The most work photographed and discussed from the 61st International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.
Austrian artist Florentina Holzinger performs at the Austrian Pavilion entitled “Seaworld Venice”. (Photo by Giuseppe Cottini/Getty Images)
The body according to Florentina Holzinger
There woman – clapper is located at the entrance to the Austrian pavilion and it’s part of the project SeaWorld Venice, edited by Nora-Swantje Almes. Installations, works and performances designed for provoke, first attract and then disgust the spectators in a latent reflection on body, technologies and nature. «The essence of my work lies in the uncompromising use of the body as a medium», explained the artist to Artribune. His training took place in dance and his concept of the body is not traditional: it is biological and engineering. Pieces that are composed and decomposed.
The collapse of Venice told with a disturbing water park
Water is the common thread of the entire project. Symbolic element of the lagoon city and metaphor of its environmental fragilityof his increasingly critical relationship with the tourism and climate change. Outside, near the public toilets, a naked woman remains in a tub made of glass for four hours with a mouthpiece in his mouth. Like a treasure in a display case, a painting in its frame: more precisely Giorgione’s sleeping Venus. Her beauty enchants, at least until viewers discover it the water it floats in is actually the filtered pee of all the visitors to the pavilion. Like Venice, this woman’s beauty is displayed as a work of art but is also immersed in other people’s wastethose of the few who live in comfort and watch from the other side of the glass as the world collapses.
Visitors explore the Austrian Pavilion titled “Seaworld Venice” by artist and choreographer Florentina Holzinger. (Photo by Giuseppe Cottini/Getty Images)
Climate change exhibited at the Venice Biennale
Among the most emblematic performances, a naked woman on a jet ski in a narrow pool zooms and spins, splashing the audience. A gesture that becomes a metaphor forovertourism and the accelerated consumption of the city. At other times, the pavilion floodsevoking directly rising seas and the consequences of global warming. The entire space thus becomes an immersive representation of the environmental crisis.
Visitors explore the Austrian Pavilion titled “Seaworld Venice” by artist and choreographer Florentina Holzinger. Performance Jet Ski. (Photo by Giuseppe Cottini/Getty Images)
The Woman from Campania by Florentina Holzinger
Of all of them, the figure of the woman from Campania remains the most iconic. His daily gesture, repeated and ritual, becomes one reflection on the female body as an object of control. A complaint directed at Catholic Church. A criticism of patriarchyto the role of women in society and religion. To the abuse and violence it has suffered for centuries. Besides the nudity, maybe that’s why the installation quickly became one of the most visited and photographed of the Biennale.
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