The Awards Ceremony of the 56th International Art Exhibition took place yesterday morning at Ca' Giustinian in Venice. As it was announced, the Board of la Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta, awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to El Anatsui (Ghana), and a Special Golden Lion for Services to the Arts to Susanne Ghez (USA), both under director Okwui Enwezor's proposal.
The Jury comprised of Naomi Beckwith (USA), Sabine Breitwieser (Austria), Mario Codognato (Italy), Ranjit Hoskote (India), and Yongwoo Lee (South Korea), very aptly assigned the Golden Lion for Best National Participation to the Republic of Armenia.
The Golden Lion for the Best Artist went to Adrian Piper for "The Probable Trust Registry: The Rules of the Game #1–3". Special Mentions went instead to artists Harun Farocki, the Abounaddara Collective and Massinissa Selmani, and the jury also honoured with a special mention the United States of America for their presentation of Joan Jonas.
People interested in changing the face of the fashion industry will be happy to hear that the Silver Lion for a promising young artist went to Im Heung-Soon for his project "Factory Complex", "a moving video work that probes the nature of precarity in relation to the conditions of labor for women across Asia," the motivation of the awards stated, highlighting "Factory Complex takes the form of a documentary but with a direct, lightly mediated, encounter with his subjects and their working conditions."
Im Heung-Soon has often been involved in community-based projects, that investigated issues such as industrial immigrant laborers and social minorities. He is indeed interested in the conditions and the struggles of those workers living in South Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia, people who have been sacrificed in the name of economic achievements.
The project that won him the Silver Lion revolves around the victimisation of women through labor in Asia. Opening with a street demonstration by immigrant labor groups in Seoul, the film looks at South Korean labor exploitation in the 1970s and 1980s and ends revealing another dark moment in recent history - the gunfire directed at underpaid women protesting at a Korean company's garment factory in Cambodia.
The documentary is suspended between art and journalism: while some scenes are more lyrical and reveal a painful emotional agony, others focus on the factories and the workers. The interviews with the workers - in some cases mothers and daughters to show how the story spans generations of women - have a journalistic flair and reveal how Korean corporations turned their backs on poor labor conditions.
Apart from showing us the miserable conditions of the workers, Im Heung-Soon highlights how the life of the laborers can't improve, even though they work for endless hours. One of the women interviewed recounts of a strike that had one key slogan - "I want to wear Nike shoes too" - a significant declaration reminding us that marginalised workers do not even get enough money to buy themselves the shoes they make.
There were certainly many projects that deserved an award for their social relevance, but giving a Silver Lion to Im Heung-Soon was quite significant: while his project is more about labor conditions in factories and the state of women workers in particular rather than about the consequences of low cost fashion, the 95 minute long documentary may help us ponder a bit more about the human exploitation behind our clothes.
The jury's choices may actually hid a very good suggestion for fashion-related celebrities and fashion designers who may visit the Biennale in the next few weeks/months: watch "Factory Complex" and then go back to see Piper's "The Probable Trust Registry" and take part in it.
The latter is an interactive performance set in a corporate environment that asks visitors to sign social and personal contracts, declarations that promise moral accountability towards themselves and others (the declarations will later on be archived at the APRA - Adrian Piper Research Archive - Foundation in Berlin). After all, it wouldn't hurt us if we collectively engaged in life-long performances of personal responsibility that could help us turning this world into a better world for everybody, would it?
Images featured in this post showing the Awarding Ceremony at the 56th International Art Exhibition by Andrea Avezzù; Courtesy of la Biennale di Venezia.
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