The installation Designated March by a "Petrol Angel," by Indian artist Riyas Komu, is among the works on view at the 52nd Venice Biennale. (Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images)

It’s Venice Biennale time again, and for those hundreds of millions who don’t already know, it’s the few days in June, in alternating years, that the latest and the greatest in the world of modern art convene in one of the loveliest cities on the planet.
 
A big name in the art world curates each show, the largest modern art exhibit on Earth and, now in its 52nd incarnation, still the most prestigious. American curator Robert Storr, who is back for a second round, selected about 100 works for the Arsenale section. It’s held in a long strip of interconnected spaces that served as the city’s main shipyard when Venice was at the apex of its naval power, rather than the exquisitely moribund city it now is.
 
The exhibit is always grouped around a theme, and after having attempted to decrypt more than a few curatorial blurbs, I can confidently report that they are always a stretch. “Think with the Senses — Feel with the Mind, Art in the Present Tense,” this year’s theme, is no exception. Storr writes that it’s all about moving away from an “all-encompassing ideological or theoretical proposal” and “supposing that the analytical dichotomies between the perceptive and the conceptual… frequently obscure or negate the complex presence of all these factors in our experience of the world…” Oh, and all the works are “attached to the present.” In other words, gathered here is a bunch of modern art, and react as you may.
 
Thanks, I will!
 
There is a lot of conceptual stuff on display in the Arsenale this year, such as the big, turd-shaped iron sculptures, courtesy of Franz West of Austria, that I floated past rather indifferently. Ditto for some of the gimmicky works, like the photo installation of decorated U.S. gravestones by Dutch artist Jan Christiaan Braun. Much of the non-conceptual art is preoccupied with the war in Iraq. Depending on whether you think artists should be tackling issues in this way, the works could be considered either powerful and subversive, or too didactic.

Bulgarian Nedko Solakov’s installation, Discussion (Property), consists of a hilariously surreal account, with paintings and videos, of his efforts to get information on the dispute between Bulgaria and Russia regarding rights to the popular AK-47 assault rifle, developed by the USSR during the cold war. The artistic punch line involves the Cyrillic alphabet and yogurt, and was worth standing in line for.

American Emily Prince has created an enormous and haunting fragmented map of the U.S. made up of differently shaded index cards. On them are pencil sketches of the young American men and women who have been killed in Iraq (3,556 to date).

Also on the warpath is Argentine artist Leon Ferrari, who took newspaper headlines of either the Pope or Iraq, cut out the accompanying articles and photos, and replaced them with graphically violent Christian imagery from the Renaissance onward. Placed alongside etchings of Dante’s Inferno, the smutty photos of the American tormenters at Abu Ghraib seem like a part of a long Christian tradition.

Video installations are always more miss than hit; many feel like someone thought it would be fun to take scraps off a cutting-room floor, splice them together in a loop and have people stand watching them in small, dark rooms. One I was happy to stand for several times was Belgian Sophie Whettnall’s Shadow Boxing. A woman in a sundress stands unflinchingly while a young, virile man throws a never-ending torrent of punches at her face, missing her by millimetres. What’s fascinating about this video is how exhausting it is to watch. Who knows what exactly Whettnall had in mind, but I thought it was a brilliant way to depict the energy women put into tuning out various forms of aggression.

This year's Venice Biennale theme is emblazoned above the city's lagoon. (Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images)

From a purely aesthetic viewpoint, Iranian artist Y.Z. Kami’s large, slightly fuzzy oil portraits are breathtaking, as is Designated March by a ‘Petrol Angel’, six dramatic renditions of an Iranian-looking woman gazing in different directions by India’s Riyas Komu.

Moving on to the Giardini, aka The Gardens.

The Giardini is the other half of the biennale — the upscale neighbourhood, if you will, to the working-class Arsenale. The Giardini is located in pleasantly shaded laneways fronting the Venice lagoon, the site of permanent pavilions belonging to the world’s richest nations (and a few of the poor ones who managed to claim turf at some point in biennale history).

My favourite installation by far belongs to French artist Sophie Calle. A few years ago, Calle was dumped by her lover in a one-page email that ended with the words, “Prenez soins de vous” — Take care of yourself. Calle did. As a way to get over her emotional devastation, she sent the Dear John email (with the ex-lover’s name removed) to 107 women, asking them to analyze it using their own unique skills. From Braille and text-message translations to opera and folk-music interpretations (including one by Canada’s Leslie Feist) to a chess master’s deconstruction (think queens and pawns and strategic weaknesses) to legal, philosophical, grammatical and mathematical breakdowns, the letter becomes utterly enthralling, a universal text of betrayal. Video readings of the letter are also part of the exhibit, with magnificent old French actress Jeanne Moreau smoking and casually tossing off wise and very funny asides.

For the past number of years, Italy has handed over its own pavilion to artists from a range of countries. This year, Germany’s Sigmar Polka has brought enormous oil paintings of dark purple verging on black; they are slightly reminiscent of Rothko, and just as affecting. Izumi Kato of Japan has a room full of stark, cartoonish paintings of nudes sitting on what look like anthills; they manage to be both creepy and beautiful.

Britain has put on a good show of Tracey Emin’s work, called Borrowed Light. It consists mainly of small, white pencil drawings of erect penises; women with their legs splayed; or phrases like “Hades” or “I know” repeated and crossed out. Emin’s scratchy images seem to depict the dirty little feelings and things we say only to ourselves — that we’re unlovable, perverted, alone and so on. What’s powerful about them is their intimacy.

Curious about what the artist-in-the-flesh was like, I meandered back later for the opening. Standing slightly aloof atop the grandiose staircase leading up to the entrance, Emin stared down the hoi polloi gathered below, there for both her speech and the free booze. She sliced the purple ribbon and in a loud, mischievous voice, pronounced the British pavilion for the 2007 biennale “officially f---ing open!”

The Venice Biennale opened June 10 and runs until November.

Megan Williams is a Canadian writer based in Rome, and author of the story collection Saving Rome.

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