Throughout the 56th Venice Biennale, one finds national pavilions that have taken up the postcolonial mantle of Okwui Enwezor’s central exhibition within the contours of their own relationships to imperialist histories. Among the most successful of these are Vincent Meessen’s Belgian pavilion, Personne et les Autres, and Fiona Hall’s Australian pavilion, Wrong Way Time. Both pavilions consider how the definition of nationalism has expanded in the past twenty years to include representations of communities formerly excluded, while using that newfound inclusion to reinforce rather than reexamine the power structures that historically promoted exclusion. In short, they consider—and in some ways demonstrate—how cultural appropriation has developed as a nationalist strategy in an increasingly post-national world.

Vincent Meessen. One.Two.Three, 2015; video. Courtesy of the Artist and Normal, Brussels. © Vincent Meessen. Belgian Pavilion, 56th Venice Biennale.

At the Belgian pavilion, Meessen and curator Katerina Gregos have invited nine other international artists to contribute works that question the European origins of Modernism in the context of global trade and conquest. The artists—Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc, Sammy Baloji, James Beckett, Elisabetta Benassi, Patrick Bernier & Olive Martin, Tamar Guimarães & Kasper Akhøj, Maryam Jafri, and Adam Pendleton—represent Africa, Latin America, South Asia, the United States, and Western Europe. Historically, Belgium was the first nation to open a pavilion in the Giardini at Venice, financed by the regime of King Leopold II with funds gained through brutal colonial oppression in the Congo. Today, Belgium is the seat of the European Union, and a country that struggles to reconcile its two distinct linguistic and cultural populations (Dutch-speaking Flemish and French-speaking Wallonians) with an influx of economic and political migrants from Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Inspired by these contexts, the exhibition reflects the manner in which the International Style of art and architecture, developed in the 20th century, succeeded and failed in its ideal of fostering utopian conditions around the globe during the era of postcolonial liberation.

Maryam Jafri. Getty Vs. Kenya Vs. Corbis, 2012; installation view (detail), Belgian Pavilion, 56th Venice Biennale. © Maryam Jafri.

This is an enormous undertaking, resulting in a pavilion that feels overstuffed with clashing forms and volumes of archival content. The most successful include Elisabetta Benassi’s live reading of Mark Twain’s King Leopold’s Soliloquy, a satire of European colonial rhetoric read from a train-stop shelter composed of massive plaster bones; and Maryam Jafri’s photo and text installation, which contrasts documentary footage of the political transitions of midcentury African independence movements with the historical record as presented by multinational corporate information conglomerates such as Corbis and Getty Images. The question of who owns historical narratives is central to both works. Tamar Guimarães and Kasper Akhøj present an installation of minimal wall sculptures and slides that juxtapose the formal lexicon of Modernism with fragments of idealized rhetoric around cultural difference. The grouping of this work with James Beckett’s roboticized library of standard Modernist architectural forms, and Sammy Baloji’s use of archival photographs to demonstrate the use of mapping as a tool for segregation in urban planning, is poignant. The three artists underscore the limited ability of rational systems such as those promoted by Internationalist artists and architects to undo entrenched social and racial biases, pointing to how such methods may instead reinforce discrimination by cloaking it in objectivity. Meessen’s own contribution links political emancipation in Congo with Marxist-inspired liberation movements throughout the Global South and the May 1968 student uprising associated with the Situationist International, a group whose genuinely international origins (including a number of Congolese) have been obscured by Francophone nationalism in the ensuing decades.

Sammy Baloji. Essay on Urban Planning, 2013; twelve color photographs; 80 x 120 cm 320 x 360 cm. each; installation view. Courtesy of the Artist and Galerie Imane Farès, Paris. © Sammy Baloji. Photo: Alessandra Bello. Belgian Pavilion, 56th Venice Biennale.

While the Belgian Pavilion is the oldest national venue in the Giardini, the Australian pavilion is the newest, debuting in 2015 with a solo exhibition by Fiona Hall curated by Linda Michael. Hall expands on the “hunting lodge” that she created for Documenta 13 in 2012 with a collection of sculptures based on the forms of indigenous folk art and archaeological collections. The interior of the pavilion is lined with glass display cases that connect Hall’s installation to Victorian-era museology, highlighting how these widely adopted systems of collection and display of art and visual culture are anchored in the values of the colonial period. Unlike Belgium, Australia has no history of conquest beyond its borders—rather, like the United States until the 20th century, its colonial project has occurred within the confines of its own land mass through systematic incarceration, brutalization, and cultural oppression of its Aboriginal people. In response to critique of this history, which included displacing a generation of Aboriginal children into boarding schools where they were stripped of their linguistic and cultural heritage, Australia has in recent years represented itself internationally through a collection of symbols drawn from indigenous sources. It remains to be seen whether this newfound appreciation of Aboriginal culture extends to improved opportunities and visibility for members of this deeply injured community.

Fiona Hall. Wrong Way Time, 2015. Australian Pavilion of the 56th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia, All the World’s Futures. Courtesy of la Biennale di Venezia. Photo: Alessandra Chemollo.

For her installation in Venice, Hall collaborated with eleven members of a collective of Aboriginal artisans known as the Tjanpi Desert Weavers, women from the Central and Western Deserts of Australia who employ traditional methods of sculpting animals from natural fibers, including native grasses. These materials, supplemented by shreds of Australian and British military uniforms supplied by Hall, were employed to create the forms of desert animals that have been eradicated by human population growth and climate change in the women’s lifetimes. The erasure of these animals parallels the decimation of Aboriginal communities. Says weaver Niningka Lewis, “I have a theory that our meat animals disappeared when we started to eat mai (white flour, sugar, and tea) […] These were our foods, and as soon as we switched foods to white people’s foods, the animals all disappeared.”[1] The loss of culture and the loss of nature are interconnected.

Fiona Hall. Wrong Way Time. Australian Pavilion. 56th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia, All the World’s Futures. Courtesy of la Biennale di Venezia. Photo: Alessandra Chemollo.

Hall’s installation resembles a historical display, but the title Wrong Way Time suggests that she is not concerned simply with resurrecting the past. The archive of objects and materials that she creates is instead a way of pointing out the magnitude of history and culture that has been lost to the colonial project. The gaping absence wrought by systematic erasure cannot be undone by creating new forms to replace the ones that were lost. Instead, the new forms become markers wrested from provisional materials, such as paper scraps and driftwood, that point to the impossibility of replacing what is missing. Both the Australian and the Belgian pavilions are anchored in the knowledge that the brutality of the colonial era cannot be undone through contemporary gestures toward reconciliation. Instead, contemporary artists wishing to engage with these themes must explore and reveal how overt colonial structures have become covert, yet still entrenched, in the postcolonial period.

All the World’s Futures—The 56th Venice Biennale is on view through November 22, 2015.

#Hashtags is a series exploring the intersection of art, social issues, and global politics.

[1] “Tjanpi Desert Weavers,” Fiona Hall: Wrong Way Time. Linda Michael, ed. (Australia Council for the Arts, Piper Press, 2015), 53.

Trade Marks, curated by Betty Julian, includes works by Keesic Douglas, Meryl McMaster, Nigit’stil Norbert, and Bear Witness in association with ImagineNative. Photographic works dominate the show. In one of the most striking images, McMaster freezes in time the cyclonic motion of a flock of birds twirling frantically around her head.

Nigit’stil Norbert. Fractured Origin, 2013; inkjet print; 20 x 20 inches. Courtesy the artist and Prefix ICA.

For Norbert’s series of photos, the contested nature of Toronto’s geography is revealed in mundane, sometimes shabby urban spaces, devoid of people but inhabited by persistent vegetal growths. Sprouting from fractures in concrete and asphalt, these poplar and sumac seedlings defy the logic of the hard surfaces that typically characterize metropolitan infrastructure. Norbert’s meditation on these places redirects our urban gaze to reconsider histories whose roots extend below the hard surfaces, breaking these surfaces and interrupting the perceived logic of the city. As Norbert reminds us in her work, these non-space spaces are in fact historical locations of indigenous congregations.

The layering of histories and the corresponding visibility of these histories in Toronto also resonates in Keesic Douglas’s series Trade Me (2010). It is in these works that the echoes of Toronto’s garment district are the most apparent, as he explores the interconnected, fractious, and problematic history of textiles, trade, and First Nations in Canada. Douglas appropriates the Hudson Bay Company’s multicolored striped points blanket, staging reimagined sites of trade as well as studio photographs.  In the studio photographs, figures are positioned against a blank white wall, recalling government I.D. photo sessions. In two of the photographs, Douglas subverts the ability to identify the subject, depicting just a hand clasping a bottle of whiskey in one and in another completely draping the figure in the blanket. This unconventional, idiosyncratic head covering created by Douglas takes on another dimension in light of the recent Parti Québécois move to pass legislation that would ban public servants in Quebec from wearing religious symbols. As the debate over the role of head coverings continues globally, Douglas’s veiling forces viewers to confront indigenous histories of textiles and their relationship to deeper structural histories that continue to exert an influence on contemporary Canadian society.

Keesic Douglas. Trade Me #7, 2010; Chromira print; 30 x 40 inches. Courtesy the artist and Prefix ICA.

Given the recent reopening of the newly refurbished flagship location of the Hudson Bay Company on Queen Street, just a few blocks east from Prefix ICA, the  points blanket appears to be on the verge of another resurgence in popularity.  Indicative of this is a website hosting photos submitted by users participating in “stripe spotting.” Photos of babies, pets, engagements, and cottages decked in the iconic stripes of the HBC jostle for attention on the site. Visitors would do well to visit Trade Marks in order to complicate this sanitized version of HBC’s history of trade in Canada. This way, viewers might earn their stripes by observing the subaltern stories bound up in the blanket’s familiar emblematic stripes.

Trade Marks continues Prefix ICA’s commitment to excellent curation, public programming, and challenging works.  With concurrent shows at the Ryerson Image Center and the ImagineNative 2013 film festival, the fall line up of exhibitions echoing the themes and issues raised in Trade Marks is particularly strong and the resulting dialogues are highly anticipated.

Trade Marks will be on view at Prefix ICA, in Toronto, through November 23, 2013.