The artistic director of the 2022 Venice Biennale, Cecilia Alemani, outlined today at a press conference her curatorial plans for the 59th International Art Exhibition, which opens this spring (23 April-27 November). Alemani revealed that the show, The Milk of Dreams, will include 213 artists from 58 countries with more than 180 artists participating for the first time.
Twenty-six Italian artists will be included while 80 new productions or commissions will be unveiled. Crucially, the exhibition will include a large number of women and "gender non-conforming artists who are challenging the figure of man as centre of the universe", Alemani said. A room will be devoted to the Portuguese artist Paula Rego; other artists due to participate include Christina Quarles, Carol Rama, Barbara Kruger, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Ali Cherri, Prabhakar Pachpute, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Marguerite Humeau and Rosana Paulino.
The title, The Milk of Dreams, is taken from a book of fairy tales written by the Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington. "She started creating drawings of hybrid creatures which featured in a booklet entitled The Milk of Dreams. They tell fantastic stories of hybrid mutant beings… imagining a world in which everybody can change and transform," Alemani said.
