It's Not About You

At this year's Venice Biennale, the exhibitions have moved away from identity and portraiture toward a new end: The future

- James Tarmy

Things quickly get weird when you step inside the 19,000-square-foot Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The installation by artist Gian Maria Tosatti has no obvious wall text, signs, or directions.

There’s nothing to indicate how to walk through the chilly, fluorescent-lit rooms made to look like abandoned factories and sweatshops, with rows of desks and sewing machines. At the end you can walk—very tentatively—onto what appears to be a concrete pier surrounded by water in an almost pitch-black room.

It’s a nod to industrial decline and climate change that the artist intended to discomfit and unnerve. “When the curator asked me to do the Italian Pavilion, he asked me to make work around a statement about our future,” Tosatti says. “We had to create some sort of mirror that could show everyone what we are today—the ashes of a broken dream, a dream we had about a future, or a present, that isn’t sustainable.” He points to the pandemic, environmental degradation, and the war in Ukraine. “Now it’s all collapsed,” he says, “so what are we going to do about it?”

Every two years massive crowds form at the must-see installations of the Venice Biennale, widely considered the most important art show in the world. After a one-year delay because of Covid-19, excitement for the 59th edition, which opened in April, was even higher.