Venice Biennale

Cecilia Vicuña is a site-specific piece made for the 2022 Biennale. It is made of bits of plastic, thread, nets, toys, sticks, and anything else that was washed up on the beach when the artist was being inspired for this piece. All of these elements are hung from the ceiling with string, and it is displayed in the middle of the room so the viewer can see other artworks and people through it. I believe that this piece contradicts everything we know about being a fundamental truth of Renaissance art including viewing artwork through a frame, movement in artwork, and the idea of one perspective.

One of the elements of Renaissance artwork that we talked about many times over our weeks in class is the idea of viewing a painting through a frame. There was a transition from medieval paintings being in a sea of gold and not having any distinction from the background, to many of the Renaissance paintings having frames around them to tell everyone ‘here is the art.’ There were even a few self-conscious nods to this change with frames within the painting, or even the characters in the painting being aware of the frame. Postmodernism rejects this frame, and in Cecilia Vicuña you can even see straight through it to the other side. The frame in the Renaissance signified that you were looking in through a window, and that the viewer is fundamentally different than the art, but I think this piece rejects everything about that. Part of the meaning of this piece is about how humans interact with the environment, as shown by the mix of natural and manmade materials used that were found washed up on the beach. Not only is the relationship between man and nature shown through the use of materials, but the also through the fact that you can see other humans through the piece. The artist wants us to know that we are one with the artwork, and the fact that you can see other people through it is an important part of the artwork. As Hayles says in Toward Embodied Virtuality, “Abstraction is of course an essential component in all theorizing, for no theory can account for the infinite multiplicity of our interactions with the real” (N. Katherine Hyles 12). This piece is not fully abstract of course, because it is made out of real things, but it uses real elements to create abstract ideas. In this way they real interacts with the artwork, just as humanity interacts with nature.

People interacting with the artwork connects to another main change form Renaissance art, and that is movement. Medieval art was very two dimensional, and if any movement was depicted, it was merely side to side as there was no depth involved. As extension replaced the site as Foucalt discussed, so was more motion brought into Renaissance artwork. The paintings became more realistic, cloth was shown to be flowing in the breeze and people could move in three dimensions. Postmodern art takes this to a whole new level, and in this piece the art itself actually moves. The objects hanging from the ceiling move in the breeze, because this artwork is right next to an open door, from the air conditioning, or when people pass by, another way that people can interact with the artwork and break the fourth wall. This idea of the artwork being in motion again connects to the point of the piece, humanity’s effect on nature, and represents how the relationship between the two is always changing, and they both have an effect on each other. Hayles also says, “Information viewed as a pattern and not tied to a particular instantiation is information free to travel across time and space” (Hayles 13). This idea of the artwork being viewed as a pattern connects to the last main change from Renaissance idea I will discuss, perspective.

Perspective was one of the radical new ideas in artwork in the Renaissance, because medieval artwork had no real perspective. Renaissance artwork acknowledged that you saw the artwork as if you were viewing it from one place through a window. Cecilia Vicuña challenges this by having no perspective, or infinite perspectives, depending on how you look at it. You can view this artwork from many different angles, and each one changes the artwork. You can even view the artwork from all sides, giving it truly as many perspectives as you would like. This breaking of the one perspective mindset connects everything I’ve said so far. Rather than being representative of one specific thing, this artwork is a pattern, meant to inspire ideas that the artist wanted to get across. Viewing the art from multiple perspectives causes the viewer to move and create wind that moves the art, which then gives the message that the artist was trying to get across- the impact of humans on nature. The amazing thing about art is that it shows us so much about our society at the time that it was created, which is exactly what Cecilia Vicuña does.

works cited:

Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999.