6th Biennial of the Caribbean

Out of Place

“Me dicen el desaparecido Fantasma que nunca esta
Me dicen el desagradecido Pero esa no es la verdad
Yo llevo en el cuerpo un dolor Que no me deja respirar
Llevo en el cuerpo una condena Que siempre me echa a caminar.”
(St. Kitts, Traditional Song)

What are we looking for in the Caribbean? We might as well say: what are we looking for in Venice, Sao Paulo, New York, Paris, London, Belfast, Berlin, all the same... What are we after? The trash and horrors left by the art world? Or the breaking point at which progress turns into raw actuality? Like Marlow in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, we journey up the river seeking familiar signs in a darker and darker reality. There's something very comforting, if numbing, in the endless elaboration of a self-sufficient, arcane vocabulary. No matter how far we go, art continues to exist in a world unto itself, a world populated by critics, gallerists, dealers, artists, directors, all speaking their own private language. A world that is highly realized and comely – a kind of managerial sublime.

Every Biennial is a cynical manipulation of consensus. And Blown Away is no exception to this attitude. It works on the structure, exposing the mechanism of any show, revealing its skeleton but taking away all the meat and flesh. As any other show, it's an exploitation of privileges, like virginity once lost; a matter of corruption, if you will. But Blown Away is also an experiment in loss. Twelve artists sharing one hotel, sharing meals, sun and baths, erasing any trace of art, elevating conversation to a virtuoso exercise, as in some painting from the 18th century, with ladies and gents sitting around and chatting the night away on red couches, the window opened on some Arcadian landscape and an ancient roman bust near the fireplace...

all pictures by Vanessa Beecroft

maurizio cattelan special