The Florence Biennale is one of the largest contemporary art and design exhibitions in the world and is considered a showcase of excellence for international artistic production. 747 artists and designers from 78 countries participated in the last edition, visited by over 10,000 people.
The XIII edition, which will be held at the Fortezza da Basso in Florence from 23 to 31 October 2021, will involve exhibitors (artists, designers, and companies) and visitors in an event full of international guests, conferences, talks, performances, educational initiatives, and workshops, which will embrace various aspects related to art and design, paying particular attention to the theme of the edition,
Eternal Feminine | Eternal Change: Concepts of Femininity in Contemporary Art and Design.
Loredana Trestin, an art curator and curatorial board member of the Florence Biennale tells us about the theme, history, and background of the great art exhibition.
Loredana Trestin
Hi Mrs. Trestin, nice to meet you. Can you give us some insight into your work as a member of the curatorial board and what the curatorial board works to achieve?
Well, I have been an art curator for many years and I am happy to have been invited to be part of the Curatorial Board of the XIIIth edition of the Florence Biennale, working with my colleagues is a source of always constructive comparisons, in a serene environment in which respect and listening to the ideas of others is the basis of collaboration. The goal is the same for everyone, to be able to create a unique and unrepeatable event both from an organizational point of view and the quality of our proposals, in a new way of presentation.
Tell us more about the theme for this year’s Biennale – Eternal Feminine | Eternal Change. Concepts of Femininity in Contemporary Art and Design, what thought process led to this theme?
The feminine theme is certainly of great interest in a society in full transformation, where the 2030 agenda, consisting of 17 sustainability points, strongly contributes to achieving gender equality. Art certainly has a decisive role in communicating change, it has always been the mirror of the society in which it operates and the LGBTQ culture in the third millennium, it is representative of a new awareness regarding the requests for respect for human rights. As with all important projects, it takes personal reflection, dialogues with collaborators and meetings, each of us proposing ideas related to culture, art, contemporaneity, evaluating topics that in today’s society have a value and a common debate feedback, contextualizing this topic to the United Nations 2030 agenda.
Florence Biennale Flyer 2021
The Biennale has been around for years, what traditions have survived and thrived over the years? In what way(s) has contemporary culture reshaped the event and traditions too?
Surely the works that the artists participating in this edition of the Florence Biennale have been selected both for quality and for close relevance to the theme of the event. I expect that the physical reality of the same is superior to the images we received for the selection, I expect that what we are going to enjoy can be compared to a concert of different instruments in total harmony with each other, without jarring of any kind.
The Biennale has been around for years, what traditions have survived and thrived over the years? In what way(s) has contemporary culture reshaped the event and traditions too?
The Florence Biennale has been the cradle of many international artists, and over the years those who participated have grown at the same time as the Biennale itself which has tried to keep up with the artistic changes in symbiosis with the evolution of society, thirteen editions in one continuous work in progress both in the choice of the works and in the way in which they were presented. When it comes to traditions, especially in Italy, beauty, aesthetics, value, the techniques that artists use are daily bread, even abroad Italian art is observed with great interest, our history of art has influenced the creative work in many countries, giving life to artistic currents of great importance, the contamination of the past with the present has always become a new way of making art, always giving us emotions and ways of reflection.
What makes Florence the perfect place for the Biennale?
Florence is called the capital of art; if we refer to the statistics produced by UNESCO, 60% of the most important works of art in the world are in Italy and about half of these are in Florence, also for this reason the city attracts a large number of foreign travelers who visit our country is a very active center of art and culture, which is why the Florence Biennale could not have a better place.
Performers at the Biennale
In a Post-Covid world, what sort of changes do you think will emerge in the Art & Design world?
We all know that covid and governmental regulations to fight it has “imposed” on us meditation, reflection on ourselves and on our time, on how we have it and we want to use it, on relationships with others, on desire to better understand who we are and what we want. Art has certainly helped many to externalize all this, including our fears and our desires, when I talk about art I am referring not only to the visual arts but to everything related to beauty and culture, from design to poetry, to dance, at the cinema, etc.
Art is able to collect our thoughts, emotions, and spirituality as a container, transforming them into creative projects, precisely in function of what we have been through due to this pandemic, we are able to externalize works of higher value for inner depth. The post covid is giving us art of great introspective quality linked to more committed research also on the techniques used.
Any thoughts for female artists and designers? From your experience over the years, what advice would give to women in the Arts?
The woman has always carried a complete baggage with her: mother, sister, wife, madonna, feminist, entrepreneur, scientist, and much more, she is endowed with a superior insight compared to man, that so-called extra gear, also happens in art, it is easier for her to transliterate her emotions, her fears, her considerations on a canvas or in the three-dimensional material, she succeeds so well that most of the time its user is almost enveloped by an energy that reaches the heart and to the mind, a frequency that quickly tunes in to others. Consequently, female artists and designers are able to reach their goals by taking into account all the information of this hypothetical baggage, with the result of offering the best to those who interface with their creations. Advice? That of always being oneself and of evaluating things with the heart and not with the mind, even professionally because the heart and this is scientifically proven, sees much more than the mind.
