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Randa Shaath. Under the Same Sky, Rooftops of Cairo, 2002-2003. Photograph. Variable dimensions.
become almost abstract, is presented by Wang Youchen (born 1964, Beijing) along with a real darkroom where the public can develop their own negatives according to old techniques. In his work, the Argentinean artist Tomás Sarraceno (born 1973) imagines plastic cockpits as flying, ubiquitous homes. Donald McRonald, a video by the Mexican artist Minerva Cuevas (born 1975), records an action in which an actor dressed as a clown instructs the patrons of a fast-food restaurant about the costs of consuming hamburgers and fries: high cholesterol, weight gain, etc., while asking them for money. On a side wall, Adel Abdessemed (born 1971), a Paris-based Algerian artist, exhibits nine large barbed wire circles. Here is another trick of interpretation; this almost minimalist, elegant work contains dramatic concepts about exclusion, forbidden territories, and confinement. Les racines du mal, a metal structure resembling a large insect by the French architect Didier Faustino (born 1968), generates its own space inside the hall, in front of the plastic cockpits; the author defines it as a reunion atoll and declares that “today art has become the laboratory of the world.”5 The space Eloísa cartonera, put together by a collective of Argentinean artists, reproduces a small, artisanal book workshop inside and outside the Biennial. With discarded materials salvaged by the
Miki Kratsman. From the series Panoramas: Gilo, 2000. Photograph. 34 2/5 x 23 3/5 in. (90 x 60 cm.). Courtesy: Chelouche Gallery.
cartoneros (urban scavengers), the team manufactures books with works by Latin American authors. Each book is unique, and some are for sale at very low prices. The members of the group, formed in 2003, see their work as a form of exchange between the artistic function and everyday life. On the second floor, the works of fifty-one artists are exhibited. Fifteen are video installations. Poético is the record of an action by the Amsterdambased Israeli artist Yael Bartana (born 1970); the action takes place in the Andromeda atoll, in front of the port of Jaffa. A solitary man paddles towards the atoll, crowned by the Israeli flag; the man substitutes the flag with an olive tree, which sways in the wind. Tonto, a video by the Philadelphiabased Puerto Rican artist Pepón Osorio (born 1955), shows a man running with his back to the viewer, never reaching his destination. The screen is behind a makeshift barrier of horizontal wood beams that viewers must peek through to see the image. This is too much like another video, shown two editions ago, by the British artist Willie Doherty, where a man seen frontally and from behind ran without stopping through a London traffic tunnel. A much more entertaining work is Verde Oliva, an action executed and recorded by Narda Alvarado (born 1975, La Paz). In this four minute-and-thirty-second video, a line of policemen emerges from an
urban billboard, blocking traffic on a wide avenue. Each one carries a green olive on a plate. At the sound of a whistle, they proceed to eat the olive, while the enraged drivers protest with their car horns. Afterwards, the policemen turn around and march back, single file, into their barracks. The representation of the photographic genre is more generous and varied, including testimonials, portraits, and simple technology like pinhole camera images using the principles of the camera obscura. Using a simple perforated tin can, the Brazilian artist Paula Trope (born 1962) created a series of images of the fantasies and experiences of a group of adolescents from the Pereirão favela in Rio. With fragments of roof tiles and bricks, pieces of wood, and discarded boxes, the youngsters have created a miniature favela, the “Morrinho,” which today covers an area of around 300 square meters and has its own population, tensions, and conflicts. Trope gives the spotlight to the authors of the game, who are enthusiastic protagonists of a serious work that pays attention to them. Randa Saath’s (born 1963) very beautiful series, Under the Same Sky, shows the varied and sometimes surprising uses of flat rooftops in Cairo. The Israel-based Argentinean photoreporter Miki Cartman (born 1959) brings images of the wall separating