ArtReview sent a questionnaire to artists and curators exhibiting in and curating the various national pavilions of the 2024 Venice Biennale, the responses to which will be published daily in the leadup to and during the Venice Biennale, which runs from 20 April to 24 November.
Sandra Gamarra Heshiki is representing Spain; the pavilion is in the Giardini.
ArtReview What do you think of when you think of Venice?
SGH I think about how paradoxical it can be to try to connect diverse discourses because, being so many, they can also deactivate. It is a complex field in all its dimensions. We must be aware of its limits as well as the transgressions that we commit when we approach such proportions.
AR What can you tell us about your exhibition plans for Venice?
SGH We will put certain modes of representation under scrutiny and expose colonial narratives attached to the conception of museums up until today. Within the pavilion, the hegemonic Western concept of an art gallery, that also was exported to the ex-colonies, is reversed. Migrant narratives, whether humans or other living organisms such as plants and primary resources that make the journey back and forth, often by force, are the protagonists and will not be normalized under the umbrella of progress and universality. The reconstruction of such narratives will be based on specific works that belong to national art galleries in order to make us participants of this present and imagine possibilities that compose and restore common stories.
AR Why is the Venice Biennale still important, if at all? And what is the importance of showing there? Is it about visibility, inclusion, acknowledgment?
SGH I believe that it still is important because it relates different sensibilities. It is a space where we can experience dialogue outside of our limits and beyond our hierarchies to expose and recognize ourselves critically.
AR When you make artworks do you have a specific audience in mind?
SGH Yes, I appeal to an audience familiar with Western art and its modes of presentation. An audience that can feel heir of this culture or at least part of it. Western art is not universal, and as such, it needs an acquired narrative and certain tools to activate it.
AR Do you think there is such a thing as national art? Or is all art universal? Is there something that defines your nation’s artistic traditions? And what is misunderstood or forgotten about your nation’s art history?
SGH It depends on what we call a nation, if we understand it as a variable construction, unstable and organic, then yes there is. I do not like to think about universal art because we tend to think the universal as a specific ideal of which we should aspire to. Universal, in any case is the necessity and faculty to create. But as heirs of a monotheist culture, we tend to create the need for an art that defines ourselves. That is why, if there are things that remains to be told in my countries, be it is Peru or Spain, it is the histories of those other ‘nations’ that make up a common story.
AR If someone were to visit your nation, what three things would you recommend they see or read in order to understand it better?
SGH It is applicable to Peru as to Spain. I would recommend Reading The Fox From Up Above and the Fox From Down Below by José María Arguedas and visit El Prado Museum as well as the Museo de América in Madrid with the aforementioned book as your guide.
AR Which other artists have influenced or inspired you?
SGH The Peruvian painter Tilsa Tsuchiya, American artists Sturtevant and Agnes Martin, and Isidoro Valcárcel Medina from Spain.
AR What, other than your own work, are you looking forward to seeing while you are in Venice?
SGH Canada with Kapwani Kiwanga, Chile with Valeria Montti Colque, Brazil with Glicéria Tupinambá and other members of the Tupinambá people, and France with Julien Creuzet.
The 60th Venice Biennale, 20 April – 24 November
