Venice Art Biennale: ECC Palazzo Mora

A couple of weeks ago, I had gone for a walk in Cannaregio area of Venice to visit some of the collateral art exhibitions of Venice Art Biennale. That included a visit to the art exhibition in the European Cultural Centre (ECC) in Palazzo Mora.

In this post, I want to present 15 artworks that I liked most in the art exhibition in ECC. The image on the left is a sculpture titled "Soleil" and it is part of an installation by Donna Isham, which you can see below at number 10 in this post.

This is the third part of my visit-diary to art events in Cannaregio area of Venice. You can also check the first and second parts of this diary at the links below:

Venice Biennale: Art in Cannaregio Part 01

Venice Biennale: Art in Cannaregio Part 02

Art Exhibition at ECC - Palazzo Mora, Venice

Since 2011, during Venice Art Biennale, ECC organises an art exhibition titled "Personal Structures". This year (2026) the theme of this exhibition is "Confluences". There are three venues of this exhibition - Palazzo Mora, Palazzo Bembo and Marinaressa gardens. It includes a mix of installations, paintings, sculptures and performances. Entrance to the exhibition is free and it is on till 22 November 2026.

This post looks only at the artworks presented in Palazzo Mora, which is located in Cannaregio area of Venice. I am hoping to go to visit the exhibition at Palazzo Bembo very soon.

This year's theme Confluences is inspired by meeting of rivers, looking at coming together of ideas, backgrounds and ways of thinking. It explores how personal experiences connect with shared realities.

Click on the images for a bigger view of the artworks. 

My 15 Favourite Artworks at Palazzo Mora

Let me now present my favourite artworks. It was not easy to choose only fifteen among the hundreds of artworks presented this year and these represent my subjective preferences, which tend towards kitsch and colourful works.

These are not presented in any particular order. In fact, at the end, I have written about which of these 15, I liked most!

1. Sculptures by Judith Unger, US

Judith has some female sculptures in ceramics with some gold work and design on the theme of rape, mostly in bright yellows. I have taken some of them in the image below.

I had seen similar works by Judith earlier, though they had softer hues. Her sculptures are often about women and their fight for dignity, about fighting injustice and healing from trauma.

Somehow, in my mind the bright and sunny yellow colour, does not match with the sadness and pain of rape. Therefore, even if the faces of the women in these sculptures are sad, the sculptures themselves seem to express hope and resilience.  

 

2. Paintings by G-Sim Seyeon, S. Korea

Seyeon has some mixed-media artworks on canvas, titled "We shared a moment". They are hypnotising, looking like erupting fireworks or some cosmic explosion.

G-Sim or Seyeon Kim as he is known as, is a south Korean artist based in Osaka Japan.   He describes his work as focusing "on capturing microscopic "moments"—vanishing instants that appear and disappear in the blink of an eye". 

Many of his early works explored exploding fireworks, while recent series depict crashing ocean waves and coastal waters. Thus, this year in the Venice Biennale, he seems to have gone back to his fireworks inspired art.

Each of his canvas is big and I could have stood there and looked at it for a long time. Unfortunately, the image can give you only a glimpse of that feeling.

 

3. Painting by Kaoru Shibuta, Japan

It is an acrylic on canvas artwork titled "Ochatsumi days". The artist says that he has picked up the invisible and harmonious sounds of Ochatsumi (tea-picking) in a tea garden - the rustle of the leaves, the wind, atmosphere of the fields - into a visual composition.

Thus, this artwork can be imagined as the musical notes of sounds in the visual language of the artist. Perhaps this means that he has synesthesia, which is a neurological condition in which senses have cross-connections, so that sounds can be perceived as colours.

Shibuta was born in Hokkaido, and is now based in Kagawa, Japan. He synthetically transforms music and natural sounds into paintings, like this work.

In terms of simplicity and a child-like sense of beauty, his artworks remind me of Mirò. 

4. Woven and Printed Fabric Painting by Desmond Beach, US

The artwork has two young black women standing close, leaning and supporting each other, against a colourful background with a layered surface of fabrics, which are expressing ancestral archives. It is titled "The Quiet Between Us".

The artwork includes a digital painting on jacquard woven fabrics, which have been stitched together by hand and by machine. I appreciated that the fabric was woven with Jacquard, a weaving shuttle first developed and used in Schio in the late 1800s, whose name is celebrated in our Jacquard gardens.

Desmond is an interdisciplinary artist, professor and researcher with a PhD in art and media.

 

5. The Mixed Media Sculpture by Martha Russo, US

This artwork has mainly ceramics, but it also includes paper-clay, glaze, wood, metal, polyurethane foam and paper, to create a mass of writhing snake-like tentacles forming a rough cube. It is described as "the ancient earth-bound substance embracing the precarious - extending into space, flirting with gravity and pulsing with fiction". 

This artwork is titled "Nomos - Venetian Cube".

Martha's biography is very inspiring. A world-class athlete and a hockey player, she suffered a career-ending injury in 1984.  An year later, in 1985 she did her BA in developmental biology and psychology. However, the injury changed the way she looked at herself and her role in the world. She began studying fine arts in Florence, Italy and did a master in fine arts in USA. She is involved with Artnauts, a socially and politically aware art collective and teaches at the in the Art and Art History Department of University of Colorado Boulder and at the College of Engineering and Applied Science

6. Paintings by Demi Padua, Philippines

This artwork includes some acrylic paintings on canvas. Its figures remind me of the steampunk costumes.

Demi is a painter, multimedia artist and a graphic designer.  Born in Calapan, Oriental Mindoro, Philippines, he was interested in becoming an artist from his childhood. His paintings bring together his experiences in theatrical production and design with visual arts.

He says that he uses layers of printed material as a collage over his paintings and shows peeling away of those additional layers to unmask his real identity, without fear of perception.

That sounds like conflicting ideas about about his gender and sexual identity, but I am not sure if he means it in that way. However, this understanding adds a sense of sadness and wistfulness to his figures. 

 

7. Paintings by José Moñú, Spain

José Moñú is an artist from Zaragosa (Spain). His artworks are acrylic paintings on canvas in bright colours. Entering in this room, felt like entering a room with deforming mirrors, where can laugh at our faces and bodies. 

He is known for his large-format, boldly coloured acrylic works featuring people with deformed, dynamic, blurred, or melted heads, which has been described as abstract expressionism.

 

8. Artworks by Vasily Klyukin, France

In this exhibition, Vasily has created some artworks by placing plywood and polycarbonate on a surface and painting them with varnish paint and acrylic to create giant puzzle-art.

His subjects are not immediately clear. For example, in the image on the left, you can see the woman with the baby, a familiar figure of Madonna with baby Jesus.

He explains his approach to art as "Demetricizm" - an art revealing the force-lines from which form is born. Originally from Russia, Vasily is based in Southern France and Monaco, he is a visual artist, sculptor and architect.

Vasily is also known for a digital design project called “Designing Legends,” which has been published as a book of imaginary architecture.

9. Ceramic Art by Lara Bohinc, Great Britain

Lara is a Slovenian-born artist, based in London UK, who creates functional ceramics in a variety of materials including stone, metal, glass and wood.

Her three artworks shown here are titled seabed vase, marine vase and trap vessel. There have been created as part of the theme work called "Shared Streams", with materials that seem to suggest a state of flux and flow.

She runs the Bohinc Studio in London, which works at the intersection of furniture, functional sculpture, and material research.

10. Installation by Donna Isham, USA

This installation paired together a diptych of paintings with a ceramic sculpture. The two paintings are - "She never left" defined as a fractured portrait and "I found it at the curio shop", while the sculpture is titled "Soleil", exploring the fluid boundary between figuration and abstraction. 

I could see the connection between the woman in the sculpture (it can be seen at the top of this post) and the painting on the left, but was not sure of how the two linked with the second painting. However, it was the one artwork that seemed to express the idea of "confluence", the theme of this exhibition. 

On her website, Donna has written, "I am an expressionist artist driven by a desire to uncover and communicate the hidden human spirit. Working across painting, sculpture, and immersive paintings ... works are created in collaboration with my husband, musician Mark Isham, extending the emotional and psychological dimensions of my visual practice through sound and animation." 

11. Artwork by Fintan Whelan, Ireland/Germany

The giant abstract artwork with mixed media on canvas has beautiful swirling colours. He is the only artist in the exhibition, for which no country was mentioned. I checked and found that he is of Irish origin and now lives in Germany, but has exhibitions all around the world, so probably feels like a citizen of the world. Appropriately, this work is titled "Earth's Abundance".

 

12. An Art-Science Collaboration by Shizuku Takahashi & Geraldine Ondrizek 

This beautiful work brings together a science author from Japan and an art professor from Oregon, USA. They both look at the journey of a single human cell as it develops.

Shizuko Takahashi has written a book titled, "Becoming you: A Journey From a Single Cell" and Geraldine Ondrizek has made a seres of 12 paintings to illustrate part of that journey.

The image below presents the steps from 2 to 5 of that journey and are titled 2. A world in a grain of sand; 3. The intricate you; 4. One cell; and, 5. Passing down.

Dr Takahashi is a Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics. Her interest is in exploring the ethical boundaries and clinical practices of technologies like oocyte cryopreservation (egg freezing) and prenatal screening. At the same time, she is also an accomplished children's book author and illustrator. 

13. Marble Sculpture by Pablo Damian Cristi, Italy-Argentina

The marble sculpture is titled "Angel without wings".

I loved the way he has used marble to represent the clothe covering the figure, covering her face like a translucent veil, torn in places like her knees.

Using a solid surface like marble to represent a soft fabric, has a long history in art, but still every time, I see something like this, it makes me pause.

Pablo has written on his instagram page that he likes using historical sculpting techniques to push the boundaries of contemporary sculpture. He is engaged in creating a monumental sculpture of Christ carrying the cross, inspired by the two sculptures of Michaelangelo on this theme. 

14. Artworks of the Orleans Gallery, USA

I loved the Jazzy vibes of these artworks from the New Orleans gallery which include works of different artists.

The artists include the following - Andrew LaMar Hopkins, Karen Ocker, Michie Cooper, Adam Trest, Joe Mustachia, Tony Bernard, Jen Morgan, Kloe Donley and Morgan Gray. Each of these artists have so much work on their Instagram pages, to which I have given links and you can spend hours looking at each of them.

 

15. Sculpture by Tim David Trillsam, Germany

The bronze sculpture is titled Bruchpilot, and has a nude sculpture of a man with a pilot-cap worn in the first world war period, and he has wings on his arms.

Tim expresses the fragility and resilience of the human form in his sculptures, that have elongated forms similar to those developed under the Mannerism movement.

His own typical touch is added in the oversized hands and feet of his sculptures.

Take a look at his website and his Instagram page, he has some very interesting artwork there.  He describes his artistic journey as "he seamlessly weaves classical sculpture education with a distinctive creative identity honed at prestigious art academies". 

In The End

I hope that you have enjoyed looking at the 15 of my favourite artworks from the European Cultural centre's art exhibition for the Venice Art Biennale 2026. If you are in Venice before 22 November 2026, find time to visit it - it is free and has a lot of beautiful art to inspire and give joy to you.

Let me conclude this journey with a Chinese artist, whom I did not include in the above fifteen but I had liked - Zhu Na. Zhu Na is a contemporary artist, actress, and pop singer from Mainland China, and her artwork is titled "My grandmother's Qipao".

Qipao is supposed to be a traditional Chinese dress, but the green dress worn by the girl-sculpture below does not look like one - may be it means that even traditional dresses could look very modern?  

If you have to choose one artwork among all those presented above, which one would you choose? I am not able to decide between Fintan Whelan, José Moñú and Kaoru Shibuta.

***** 

 

Venice Biennale: Art in Cannaregio 02

At the Venice Art Biennale, I visited some collateral events in Cannaregio area close to the Santa Lucia Venice railway station. You can also check the first part of this visit-diary, in which I visited 3 such events.

This second part of my visit-diary looks at the art-exhibitions at Palazzo Donà delle Rose and the International Graphic School. Both these exhibitions can be visited free till 22 November 2026. In addition, it mentions the Jesuit church Santa Maria Assunta.

 

The above image is from the Indonesian pavilion at the International school of Graphics in Venice. You can click on all the images of this post for a bigger view.

The third and last part of this diary is about the art exhibition in Palazzo Mora, the European Cultural Centre.

1. San Donà delle Rose Palace

This Palace located at 5038 Fondamenta Nove is hosting an exhibition called Fissures of Light - Diaspora: Dissonances in F# minor, including a group of artists from Guinea Equatorial. (Left: All the artists taking part in the exhibition at this palace)

The exhibition site includes different rooms and halls spread over 2 levels.

I am presenting some of the artworks which I liked in this exhibition, starting with a couple of artists from Guinea Equatorial.

Armando Abel Dyangani Mega, Guinea Equatorial: I will start with the artworks of Armando, whom I met and spoke to at the exhibition. He said, "I was born in Bata city where I studied initially and later went to Malabo. When I was 22, I came to study art in Salamanca, Spain. Since 2013, I live in Malabo in Guinea Equatorial." 

In the image below you can see Armando Abel Dyangani Mega with two of his artworks from this exhibition.

 

Fernando Nguema Medja, Guinea Equatorial: Fernando was a self-taught artist, who

learned sculpture from his uncle sculptor Antonio Edu, and he did carvings of traditional instruments, Balele masks and other arts of Fang tradition.

He lived for some time in Gabon, where he learned from Gabonese artist Obiang Djang. He died in 2008, when he was only 45 years old.

The image presents one of his artworks in the exhibition, which has a colourful traditional sculpture of the Fang people of Equatorial Guniea. 

Ibou Ndoye, Senegal: Born in Dakar, Senegal, Ibou is known for his mixed media art work and paintings. His art is known for the "perplexed faces" of street people and emigrant lives.

Ibou's grandmother was a tie-and-dye artist and his mother a dressmaker. Perhaps, that is why his artwork in this exhibition were painted fabrics, reminding about his background.

 

He graduated from the Fine Arts School of Dakar and spent time in Paris, France, before moving to the United States. He works with glass windows, canvases, carpets, and found objects. His work blends Senegalese traditions with modern abstraction to tell stories of everyday people and cultural identity.

Yasna Kohlbrenner Koko'Ya, Switzerland:  Originally from Basel (Switzerland), Koko'Ya wants to give voice to the voiceless through her art. 

 

She has presented her artworks in exhibitions in different parts of Africa including Nigeria and Democratic Republic of Congo. Many of her artworks presented in this exhibition also had strong African influence, such as the work shown in the image.

Rosa Mundi (Chiara Modica Donà dalle Rose), Italy: Rosa has grown up between Venice and Palermo (Sicily). She has studied art at Venice, Strasbourg and Paris. In 1993, she developed the Neo-Spatialism approach to art, following the pioneering work on Spatialism (use of space) by Argentinian-Italian sculptor-artist Lucio Fontana. According to Neo-spatialism, time does not exist but is only a human perception.

Light is a key element in the artwork created by Rosa. She does experimental installations, sculptures, paintings and photography, in a rich visual language. Over the past few years, she works mainly with marble, wood and terracotta. 

Her works in the exhibition include a double-sided Pinnochio, a marble sphere and a suitcase, shown in the image. She has created the Donà dalle Rose foundation. Her website provides more information about her.

Fulvio Merolli, Italy: Fulvio studied art in Rome and in Carrara. Since early 2000s, he is involved with an artistic collective called M'Arte Scultura. 

He is known for his monumental works displayed in public spaces as well as, for sacred spaces, especially in the Carrara marble.

In this exhibition, Fulvio has three artworks, all three in Carrara marble. The image below shows his artwork of a swimmer and the waves of water, all created with marble.

 

Martin Emschermann, Germany-Italy: Martin was born in Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany, studied art in Carrara, Italy and since 1990 lives in Palermo (Sicily, Italy), where he works as a sculptor. Over the past decades, he is known for his series of works on different themes.

For example, you can see his amazing sculptures of children made with iron and polyester resin and in partially maiolicated terracotta in his portfolio on his webpage. 

In this exhibition he has a few terracotta sculptures of children playing with soap bubbles that are absolutely amazing.  

2. The Jesuit Church

Coming out of the Donà delle Rose palazzo, I briefly stopped outside the Jesuit church dedicated to the ascension of St Mary (Santa Maria Assunta), which was originally built in 1128, while the present church building is from 1728.

At the top of the church is the marble sculpture of St Mary with the angels by Giuseppe Torretto while the front façade has the statues of the 12 apostles. Built by the crusaders, this church has many beautiful artworks including a painting by Tintoretto.

I was in a hurry and did not have the time to stop and visit the inside of this church. After the church my next stop was Palazzo Moro, but I am planning to write a full post dedicated to it, so I will proceed straight away to my last stop in Venice on this visit - the international school of Graphics in Calle Seconda del Cristo.

3. Indonesian Artists at the International School of Graphics

The first image of this post at the top shows one of the installations by an Indonesian artist, made like a well, that was supposed to collect rain water and whatever other materials wind brought to it.

The Indonesian exhibition was structured around an imaginary journey of Datu Na Tolu Hamonangan, the archivist of Harajaon Pusuk Buhit kingdom in 15th century Indonesia, from Lake Toba, to west Sumatra, to Malacca, passing from India and Egypt and reaching Venice. Incisions of different Indonesian artists are presented in this exhibition to depict this journey.

 

For example, the two images (above and below) are artworks of Agus Suwage using different materials and techniques such as linocut, water-colour and tobacco juice, present the journey in the east and in India.

 

The next image has oil portraits of imagined people he met during the journey and are by Ristyo Eko Hartanto.

 

In the End

I want to conclude this second part of my visit-diary with details of a sculpture by Martin Emschermann, that I liked very much.

 

The next, third and last, part of my visit diary  focuses on the artworks in Palazzo Mora. You may also like to read the first part of this diary to other art events in Cannaregio.

*****

Venice Biennale: Art in Cannaregio 01

Venice Art Biennale 2026 was inaugurated in May, but it was so hot during this summer that I kept on postponing my visit. Now, the temperatures have come down but I am troubled by knee pains.

In the end, I thought that I will go to see some of the collateral art events in Cannaregio, near the Venice Santa Lucia railway station, as it does not need too much walking.

Venice Art Biennale and most of the collateral events will be on till 20 November 2026. 

This is the first part of my visit-diary to collateral events of Venice Art Biennale in Cannaregio area of Venice. 

The image on the left shows the Church of Abbey of Compassion, my first stop on this Venice art-walk. (You can click on all the images for a bigger view) 

All the places that I visited during this visit had free entry. 

1. Art at the Church of Abbey of Compassion (Chiesa dell'Abbazia della Misericordia)

I started my walk with this ex-church (image above) that is used frequently for art exhibitions and events. The old church has a big hall with a beautiful ceiling painted in blue with stars.

There are two artists in this hall - Patty Toro Ribbeck from Santiago in Chilli and Keiko Yamagiwa from Tokyo, Japan.

Patty Toro Ribbeck 

Patty studied art in Florence. She explores the themes of identity, intimacy and sensuality, especially in terms of femminine sensibility through accessories made with ceramics. Originally trained as a designer, she teaches decorative ceramic painting and glass modelling.

 

Patty showed me a box with tiny ceramic works (image above) in different shapes that she had prepared for use with her work. She explained that the first step is to prepare these ceramic pieces, which she then colours and fixes them with a second oven-heating, and then uses them for making her art works.

 

For the exhibition in Venice, she has taken eye-glasses and converted each of them as an artwork by adding and fixing the tiny ceramic pieces in different shapes and colours to each frame (3 examples shown above - click for a bigger view). Thus, each of her artwork looked like a pair of eye-glasses expressing a specific femminine personality.

Keiko Yamagiwa 

Keiko is from Japan and she went to an art school in London, UK. Over the last years she is experimenting with performance-installations in which two persons enter a space created by a translucent black sheath and play with inter-relationships and intimacy created in that space. She experiments with locations and different shapes of the sheath, in which the spectators add an additional layer of relationship as they look at them from outside.

 

More recently, she has also experimented with these performance-installations by involving hundreds of persons covered under enormous black sheaths. In one such performance, she showed the picture in which the participants had raised their hands to hold the sheath in what seemed to be synchronised movement, without Keiko or anyone actually guiding this process.

You can see some of the Venetian experiences of these two artists, including some where they partecipate in each other's art on their Instagram pages - Patty & Keiko. 

2. Fallani Venezia Screen-Printing Workshop 

The Fallani Venezia workshop on Calle Lunga Santa Caterina, on my way to Fondamenta Nuova was not a part of Venice Biennale but as I was walking, I saw some beautiful prints inside and went inside to look at some of them.

It was an opportunity to talk to its owner Gianpaolo Fallani (in the picture with an artwork of Dario Fo) and learn about Serigraph Printing or the Silk-screen printing. It is a specialised way of making artistic prints. Gianpaolo explained to me that the first step is artist makes an artwork and brings to the workshop. A digital copy of that artwork is first made and a silk-screen (actually now they use a synthetic tissue instead of silk) is stretched and fixed on a wooden frame. Then a film with parts corresponding to each colour designed in black are put in front of the tissue-screen and exposed to strong light, so that the exposed parts become hard and the black parts remain soft, which is then washed. Thus, through this complicated process the silk/tissue screen is prepared with that artistic design which is then used make prints.

Gianpaolo explained that during the times of his father Fiorenzo Fallani many famous Italian artists such as Renato Guttuso, Salvatore Fiume, Emilio Vedova and Fabrizio Plessi, used to come to this workshop for their printing. Even today artists come there for their specialised printing. During my visit, he was busy working on an artwork made by an American artist. He also hosts artists for art-residencies so that they can find out the artistic possibilities of this screen-printing techniques. The webpage of the workshop has a large number of known names from the contemporary art world, including Gianpaolo Fallani himself.

In 2018, Gianpaolo Fallani received the Maestro d'Arte e Mestieri award (MAM - Master of Art and Crafts award) and his screen-printing laboratory is part of the "Diffused Museum of Paper and Prints" in Venice.

3. Fondamenta Nuove Theatre - David Cerny

My third stop was the Theatre, which is hosting an exhibition of the artworks of the Czech artist David Cerny.

Born in a family of artists in 1967, David studied art in Prague. He has won numerous awards including the most promising young Czech artist in 2000. In 2001, he launched a non-profit for contemporary art called Meetfactory and in 2017 he started Black n' Arch an architectural studio for innovative approaches to architecture and design. Apart from being an artist and architect, he is active in the areas of cinema and music.

He has different art works in the theatre, for me among them the most striking are three works -

(1) A sculpture of American President Donald Trump, sitting on a multi-coloured chair made of Lego-like pieces, his head bowed down, looking sad and thoughtful. He is shown wearing a half white and half dark suit, with one white shoe and the other dark, with his trademark magenta tie. 

(2) A wax sculpture of a dead man, lying on the floor among scattered pieces of glass, his eyes unseeing and open. Like Trump, he is also shown half real, with flesh and colours, and half white coloured mannequin.

 

(3) A film about the chimpanzee holding a human thigh bone and using it to playfully hit on other bones, including many skulls lying scattered in an area. It was as if a child was playing at the scene of a massacre.

All his different artworks are visually very striking and in a way disturbing. For example, looking at the man lying dead surrounded by broken glass, with his glazed eyes, looked so real that I was shocked.

In The End

This is the first part of the diary of my visit to art-events in Cannaregio area of Venice.

The second part will deal with some more smaller spaces, similar to the ones presented here, while the third part will be dedicated to the artworks in Palazzo Mora, the European Culture Centre.

The Venice Art Biennale is much more than this - apart from the numerous country pavilions which require an entry ticket, there are many other collateral events in other parts of Venice, which have free entry. My only problem is that I might need a knee-replacement to be able to look at all of them!

 

The last image of this post (above) has an overview of the hall hosting the David Cerny's installations. 

***** 

Favourites from 5th Paper-Made Art Biennial

"Papermade" is the biennial art exhibition focusing on paper-art held in Schio (VI) in the Veneto region of Italy. The 5th Papermade is going on now and can be visited on weekends and holidays till the end of February 2022. I love the idea of paper-art and I think that this years' exhibition has managed to bring together some great art works and is probably the best Papermade Art Exhibition so far! The exhibition is being held at Palazzo Fogazzaro in the city centre of Schio. (Click on the images for a bigger view)

Different Italian cities hold art biennales, the most famous being the Venice biennale. Other art biennales are held in Florence, Milan, Rome and Salerno. Compared to those bigger cities, the biennale of Schio is smaller with about 80-100 art works but it is also unique in this region as it focuses only on paper art. Some other well known Paper-Art Biennales include the ones in Lucca (Italy), Shanghai (China) and Nantou (Taiwan).

I had started this post thinking that I will choose my favourite 10 art-works but there were just too many that I did not wish to leave out of this post. So in the end, I have chosen 20 (but I could have easily added another 10). Therefore, it is a long post with a lot of pictures. If you are one of the artists in the exhibition and you wish to get some pictures of your artwork, do let me know and I will be happy to send them to you. 

Let me start with the work which is shown above. It combines drawing with collage, is titled "Girls eat the air with silver spoon" and is by an American artist of Cuban origins called Lisyanet Rodriguez. She wants her art to be "beautiful and disturbing simultaneously" and uses old dresses to cover "creatures that have several deformities, mutations, and hybrid bodies". Looking at Lisyanet's work in this exhibition, I thought that it beautifully captures the pressure on people, especially on women, to have thin bodies. Perhaps the title of the work also refers to other food-fads, ranging from keto and paleo-diets to vegans and no-glutens - I am not sure. This work was used on the banner of the Biennale.

Anita Gratzer

I want to start my favourite artworks list with Anita Gratzer from Austria, who has an installation with 8 sculptures of paper-clothes in the central hall of Palazzo Fogazzaro. It is a very striking installation, using the papers of old texts to represent people and events. The image below shows the close-up of the sculpture called "Mantis Shogakai" and has a worship dress made from an old text about Kabuki and the inventory records of a sake factory in Onishi on the Japanese Washi-Paper. It represents the art and calligraphy gatherings of artists which were called Shagokai. She made this work when she was in Mantta in Finland. Thus, the title of the art-work bring together the spirit of Mantta and a 19th century Japanese tradition in this sculpture. Anita defines them as "wearables" which "function as mobile shelters of the fragile memory."

Sculptures by Carlo Pasini & Thomas Ashley

Papermade-5 has a few works of Thomas Ashley. In one exhibit his work on Linocut print forms the background to a very striking wounded tiger in cardboard and mixed materials by Carlo Pasini, which occupies a place of pride in the entrance hall of the exhibition. Pasini's tiger lies with its tummy up, in a vulnerable position, over an intricate linocut by Ashley. The tiger has pieces of glass embedded in its body as if it had tried to jump over a wall lined with broken glass, and thus had got hurt. It also has numerous needles sticking out of its body, as if someone wanted to use it as a kind of voodoo doll. The tiger sculpture is titled "Scoprimi tutta" (Discover or uncover me completely) but I prefer to call it The Wounded Tiger. For me it symbolised the climate and the nature crisis.

Paper Saloon by Alicia Olaya Rodriguez

The art-work by the Spanish artist is a big installation composed of different pieces of furniture, lamp, bracelets and the bust of a woman covered with curly hair, all made from folded paper. This installation is spread over 2 rooms in the exhibition. It is striking because it represents a huge amount of work and an inventive use of paper for the expression of beauty. It seems to show the riches of a noble family and the use of the paper seems to represent the transient nature of fame and wealth.

Lost Keys of Claudio Onorato

Italian artist Claudio Onorato, based in Milan, also has a few very complex works in the exhibition. The image below shows part of an art work called "I have lost the keys to my house". It is made from black-paper with pencil design and a humungous amount of detailed paper-cutting. I think that it is an example of taking paper-cutting as an extreme art-form. The impact is very striking and fascinating. Claudio expresses his resistance to inequalities and cruelties in the world through creating works in which empty spaces, air and light are as important as the paper.

Wallflowers by Linda Rademan

Linda Rademan is an artist from South Africa. Her art work in Papermade-5 is very special - it is made on a large number of tea-bags, which have been sewn together to form the surface on which she has used dry-point and embroidery to show old images of girls. The image below has a close-up of a part of this work. She is based in Johannesburg and she likes to explore Afrikaner female identity through her works.

I must confess that I have some prejudices against the "Afrikaner identity", which date back to the apartheid regime period. However, the apartheid finished almost 30 years ago and today Afrikaners are as much a part of South African identity as anyone else.

Thinking about this subject made me reflect about so many other factors which influence our perceptions about art and artists, which do not have much to do with the artistic worth of the individuals. I remember similar considerations while choosing the awards for documentary films when I was part of a jury for a film festival in Italy some years ago. We make a great show of objectivity and fair-play but it is not easy to avoid our prejudices. I can imagine that it may not be easy for Rademan to be known as an artist focusing on the Afrikaner female identity.

Protection Suit by Alexio Berto

Italian artist Alexio Berto's sculpture of a man wrapped in a white partially transparent tissue protection suit filled with recycled papers is one of the most explicit references to the on-going Covid-19 pandemic in this exhibition. Most of us must have seen figures dressed in those clothes in the hospitals or at least on the TV screens.

Technique by Giorgio Tentolini

The installation by the Italian artist Giorgio Tentolini has paper-cuttings of huge digital prints of faces. The long stripes of papers in multiple layers move up and down and the faces can be seen only from a distance. I thought that this work expressed the enormity of cosmos and the huge distances between the particles in the atomic world - the closer we go, the lesser we can see and the patterns become clear only from the right distance. The faces disappearing in the stripes also reminded of faces hidden behind veils and how veils can splinter us in pieces, hiding us, protecting us but also killing us in a way, or at least stopping us from living fully by interfering in our interactions with others. I am not sure how Giorgio Tentolini would feel about my interpretations about the significance of this work.

The Happiness I Can't Say by Maikel Domingues

This giant art installation by the American artist of Cuban origins, Maikel Dominguez, occupied a large part of the central hall of Palazzo Fogazzaro. It included a white crystal/resin bunny statue (it did not look like made from paper) placed at the end of a long beautiful carpet, as well as pink tiles with paper figures of more bunnies riding deer on one of the walls. The central bunny sculpture made of numerous white flowers, reminded me of some of the works of the Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei. At the same time, Maikel's the choice of the bunny-figures riding on the deer on the wall-tiles, also reminded me of the Tele-Tubbies, a children's TV programme.

I felt that there were some deeper hidden meanings in this art-work though I am not sure of them. Each tile was designed individually and beautifully, once again reminding me of Ai Wei Wei's works. The bunnies were like astronauts, hiding faces of people, and some of them looked sick or dead. Were these people in protection suits? Were all these references linked to Covid-19 pandemic?

Atlas of Fear by Krisimaria Toronen

Finnish artist Krisimaria Toronen had a site specific installation in the toilet of Palazzo Fogazzaro. The art-work included strips of paper and hand-written chains of words growing like a creeper along the walls of the different rooms. The words could have been the DNA of the Corona virus. The most obvious meaning of the installation was the fear of the pandemic, highlighted by locating it in a toilet, which is often seen as the origin of diseases. Normally, modern toilets are all gleaming and clean tiles and seeing them covered with the ants like words was disturbing.

The Adults by Silvia Mei

Silvia is an Italian artist and her work in the exhibition had a brightly coloured painting of people with disturbing faces. I guess she was showing the masks which we carry in the world for hiding our real feelings. The painting was very striking, and while I could appreciate it, I don't think that I would like it in my bedroom.

Psuedobombax Grandiflorum by Margherita Leoni

Italian artist Margherita Leoni had a water-colour painting in this exhibition. Though very simple, I liked the hyper-realism of the flowers and leaves in it. She is known for her beautiful botanical water-colours and she also runs training courses on this theme. If she was based in Schio, I would have loved to join Leoni's water-colours learning classes.

The Night Before The Arrival Of The Barbarians by Kristina Pirkovic

Serbian artist Kristina Pirkovic had a big painting covering one wall of the exhibition rooms. Divided into panels, it probably represented rooms or houses with the parallel lives of people living inside them. Though, the title of the painting was "before the arrival of the barbarians", the people it showed were not particularly happy - actually most of them looked anguished, some seemed to be sick while others had their heads cut-off. There were some animals scattered between them and a sad-looking church with a graveyard in one of the panels. If this was their condition before the barbarians had arrived, what happened after their arrival? A massacre? It was again a very striking and disturbing art work, which I could appreciate but would not like to have it in my bedroom.

Mare Nostrum by Gianfranco Gentile

Gianfranco Gentile is known for his artworks infused with social consciousness. He often uses waste materials like card-board boxes used for packaging, in his art. For Papermade-5, he has a site-specific installation covering one of the pillars in the entrance of Palazzo Fogazzaro. The pillar was covered with cardboard and had collages of fishes, waves, boats and immigrants, trying to cross "Mare Nostrum" (our sea), clearly referring to the immigrant boats from Africa which try to reach Italy and Europe. Unfortunately, the image below does not give a good idea of this work.

Oversight by Art Werger

This artwork by the American artist Art Werger had etching with aquatint prints. It showed an image as if seen through a drone with black eagles flying above the houses. It had hyper-realism with a 3D like effect, which was very nice. Werger is a professor of Printmaking at the University of Ohio and has received a lot of awards for his works.
I wondered if Art is his real name? If yes, his parents must have been artist or at least art lovers, who had wanted their child to become an artist. That makes me thinks of Nietzsche's famous poem about children being the arrows that God launches through us, and I wonder if Art had not wished to be an artist and instead, wanted to be an accountant or an astronomer, how would he have felt about his name?

On his website, Art Werger has explained the ideas behind his work: "My recent work continues to explore themes of time/space and the nature of representation as shared experience. Through the media of etching and mezzotint, these pieces attempt to place the viewer into an active relationship with the subject through various forms of narrative engagement. My subjects are drawn in a realistic manner but are often observed from an unusual angle. I present imagery from an aerial vantage point, or overlapping other layers of reality, taking on the role of the omniscient narrator in a work of fiction."

ZidArta by Suzana Fantanariu

Romania is a special country for this edition of Papermade-5 and it has artworks of different Romanian artists. Among them, I liked the works of Suzana Fantanariu. The one I have chosen to show here is a collage work. I loved its rough textures. I also liked the works of Ana Golici, another Romanian artist in this exhibition.

Fragility of Life by Agniezska Cieslinska

The Polish artist Agniezska Cielinska also uses etching with aquatint for print-making. There are 3 of her works in the exhibition. I have chosen the one with a red background and an intricately designed face made of two cups which fit into each other. Artist and graphic designer Cielinska is a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.

Infinite Paths by Johny Hycinte Ngbwa

Johny Ngbwa is an Italian artist of Cameroun origins. His big linocut work full of intricate black and white lines occupies one whole wall of a room in the exhibition. Looking at it from close gave me a sense of vertigo. The lines seemed to create sand dunes of a desert spreading like snakes over a black lake. It was a beautiful work, something I could look at for a long time and continue to find inspiration for Zen meditations. Young looking Johny, also known as Johny Stecchino (from a film-title of Roberto Begnini), is considered to be an emerging talent in incisions-art.

ST/110 by Sandro Battaglia

Italian artist Sandro Battaglia has a set of artistic B/W photographs of the common moka, used for making coffee in the old fashioned way in Italy, against a blue background. By focusing on the different parts of a moka (moca) and looking at them from different angles, Battaglia has created a kind of geometric poem with the composition of the photographs. I found it lyrical and beautiful. Battaglia has collaborated with a number of well-known Italian film-directors including Sergio Leone and Pasolini, and is a big name in photo-journalism.

My Dream by Sopap Petcharaporn

Sopap Petcharaporn from Thailand has a big woodcut print in Papermade-5. It is very intricately designed piece of art. Its subject reminded me of the lock-down photographs and videos from last year (2020) when the absence of humans on the roads and parks had brought out some wild animals in the cities and urban areas. It shows a deer and some birds in an apartment overrun with plants and creepers, while in the open space you can see sky-scrappers. Petcharaporn specialises in creating intricate woodcut work.

Boundaries by Damiano Azzizia

Let me conclude this post with one of my favourite artworks from Papermade-5 - a simple and unassuming work, which had absolutely marvellous texture. It was called Confini (Boundaries) and was by a young Italian artist called Damiano Azzizia. It had the painting of a room, probably on card-board used for packages. I loved the kind of leathery look he had achieved, with an amazing texture. It looked really simple, almost minimalist, and I really liked it.

Conclusions

I had started this post with the idea of selecting 10 artworks, in the end I have chosen 20 and there were still so many others that I had liked, which are not there in this list. For this post, I have chosen images which show close-ups and details of the art-works. Many of the works in this exhibition are actually immense, so these pictures can only give you an idea and you need to fully experience them by visiting the exhibition.

The last image of this post is of an artwork by the Romanian artist Ana Golici. I hope that these images will inspire you to visit the Papermade-5 exhibition.

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