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Director Mondtag, artist Bartana
Photo: [M] Andrea Rosetti / German Pavilion / dpa
The Israeli artist Yael Bartana and the German theatre director Ersan Mondtag are designing the German Pavilion for the Venice Art Biennale. Under the title »Thresholds«, history and the future will be told from the perspective of various artistic positions, the responsible Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations announced on Tuesday.
The Biennale will take place from 20 April to 24 November. Along with the documenta in Kassel, it is considered the most important presentation of contemporary art.
"The artistic contribution to the German Pavilion seeks to deal with thresholds, steps and boundaries in three scenarios," the press release said. The curator of this year's German Pavilion is Çağla Ilk, an architect born in Istanbul and co-director of the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden. "We are on the threshold. Nothing is certain," Ilk says of Thresholds. Will we be able to turn this into an honest moment of humanity?"
The artist Bartana, 53, who lives in Amsterdam and Berlin, wants to use her work on the threshold of a present that is perceived as catastrophic to seek possibilities for future survival. The part of the 36-year-old director Mondtag is intended to counter the monumental character of the pavilion, which was designed during the Nazi era, with "a fragmentary, seemingly small narrative".
A third scenario is created on the lagoon island of La Certosa, located between Venice and the Lido. The Berlin-based artists Michael Akstaller, Nicole L'Huillier, Robert Lippok and Jan St. Werner want to create a resonance space there that is at home in nature, "which stands in contrast to the monumentality of the German Pavilion and emphasizes the idea of overcoming thresholds."
skr/dpa