Thresholds curated by Çağla Ilk: German pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia
Venice, Italy
April 20 – November 24, 2024

For the German contribution to the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, the curator Çağla Ilk has invited the artists Michael Akstaller, Yael Bartana, Robert Lippok, Ersan Mondtag, Nicole L’Huillier, and Jan St. Werner to navigate the verge, the gradation, the boundary under the title of Thresholds. Proceeding from alternative readings of history and the future, the contribution extrapolates realms of experience from the liminal. For the first time, and for the duration of the exhibition, the German Pavilion’s presentation extends beyond the boundaries of the Giardini della Biennale to a further location: the neighbouring island La Certosa. Yael Bartana and Ersan Mondtag present their work in the pavilion building. On La Certosa the idea of the threshold is extended in contributions by Michael Akstaller, Nicole L’Huillier, Robert Lippok, and Jan St. Werner.

Thresholds are liminal spaces subject to a paradoxical intermediate order. They lead from one place to the next and are both spatial and temporal connectors. The curatorial method adopted for the presentation is to link different artistic approaches and disciplines within a pluralist overall story-telling. Proceeding from the present as a threshold, as transition, where past and future overlap, the artistic contributions deal with both the threshold as a place between different kinds of belonging and with the communities that inform this space of meanings. The concept is inspired by the thinking of Georgi Gospodinov and Louis Chude-Sokei, who accompany the German contribution as Chroniclers in an active interchange.

Thresholds is about space, moving through a house, or a building but also encountering the world through it. It is about passages, and tunnels, and about how space gives rise to meanings, particularly from culture to culture, ethnic group to ethnic group, and how communities in motion make home within spaces that are often inhospitable, and often incarcerate or expel them. After all, to speak of space is to speak also of borders.

more. www.deutscher-pavillon.org