Imagine an old sheet hanging on a rope. A striped sheet, somewhat faded. With the wind bending it at every puff of lagoon breeze. Imagine it and then ask yourself: is it a flag? And if so, of what? On the last Saturday of May, at five in the afternoon, that hour when the air begins to become thinkable, at SPUMA, a former brewery transformed into an art space on Giudecca, “Motion of a Nation” was inaugurated, an exhibition curated by Antonio Arévalo. An exhibition that is a war declaration on symbols. But one of those wars fought with paper, videos, pencil scratches, camera lenses. Silent wars, on tiptoe, but that blow meanings sky-high like semantic molotovs.
Paolo Angelosanto, “Senza titolo” (from the “Made in Italy”series), 2009, 2025. Acrylic and sewn on wallpaper, 47 x 63 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Palimpsesto APS
Arévalo, Chilean by origin, citizen of the world by conviction, says it clearly: «Motion of a Nation doesn’t present itself as a simple archive of images, but as a bold and ironic journey in the panorama of contemporary arts, where art becomes an instrument of resistance and cultural proposal». Unwritten subtitle: here the idea of homeland, nation, flag, border is dismantled. Here we question the bricks with which we built our house. And we try to rebuild it, perhaps, or just burn it down. Thirty-one artists and an anarchist collective (the magnificent Collettivo Escuela Moderna/Ateneo Libertario, a name from a South American novel) to say that the nation is also an invention, often violent. A mousetrap with colors on it. A reason to divide, segregate, justify wars, borders, limits, torture, checkpoints, passports, fences, documents, lines of people waiting for something that won’t come. What’s on display? A bit of everything. Painting, drawing, photography, video art, installations. It’s like opening the suitcase of identity and finding inside both the treasure map and an anti-personnel mine.
Filippo Berta, “Gente Comune”, 2021. Video, HD, one-channel, color sound. Courtesy dell’artista e di Prometeo Gallery, Milan-Lucca
There’s Santiago Sierra (who has already made men and flags kneel in the past), there’s Zehra Doğan, Kurdish artist and journalist who paid with prison for her freedom of expression, there’s Diango Hernández with his geopolitical collages, there’s Regina José Galindo, who has screamed against everything in every possible language. And there are also Filippo Riniolo and Gaston Ramirez Feltrin, who during the inauguration performed the nation – whatever performing a nation means – and believe us, it made sense. But don’t think of a gloomy exhibition, with gray walls and captions that make you want to take an anxiolytic. No. Here you laugh, smile, are caught off guard. You look at a flag and discover it’s made of holes. That it’s been eaten by conceptual moths. That maybe it was just a scarf forgotten in a migrant’s backpack.
Zehra Dogan, “EBiz (Us)”, 2017 -2018. Coffee, cigarette ash, pomegranate juice, turmeric, ballpoint pen, smuggled paint on matters lining 102 x 75 cm. Courtesy Prometeo Gallery, Milan-Lucca
The exhibition is free. Until July 31st, from 11am to 7pm, Wednesday to Sunday. In July only by appointment, because art in Venice, in summer, needs time and silence. And perhaps also sweat. SPUMA, with its walls still stained with beer and working-class memory, is the right place. There’s nothing institutional, nothing dusty. It’s a living place. That pulses. That welcomes and doesn’t exclude. Just like a nation should do, if only it weren’t too busy defending its borders. If you can go there, try to think beyond. To undo in order to redo. To stop asking “where are you from?” and start asking “where do you want to go?”
Info:
AA.VV. Motion of a Nation
31/05 – 31/07/2025
Spazio Spuma
Fondamenta S. Biagio, 800/R, Venezia
www.instagram.com/veniceartfactory
Independent artist and curator. Founder of No Title Gallery in 2011. I observe, study, ask questions, take informations and live in contemporary art, a real stimulus for my research.
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