The Milk

of Dreams

Between Magic and Reality
Flaminia Gallo

Simone Leigh Sentinel DSC.8936 2_1066_1600

“The Milk of Dreams” is the title of the 59th Venice Biennale, curated by Cecilia Alemani. This year’s biennale was highly expected after almost two years due to the pandemic, and artists were able to revive themselves, despite the physical and creative blockade during to the lockdown.

“The Milk of Dreams” takes its title from a book of fairy tales by Leonora Carrington (1917-2011), in which the surrealist artist describes a magical world where life is constantly reinvented through imagination and everything is allowed to change, transform, and become something other than oneself. It is a free universe full of endless possibilities, unlike the one that forces Carrington to live as an exile, locked up in psychiatric hospitals. Asked when she was born, Carrington replied that she was generated by the encounter between her mother and a machine, in a bizarre communion of human and animal that marks many of her works.

It is precisely the theme of physical and spiritual metamorphosis that encapsulates the theme of this year’s Art Biennale. In fact, the exhibition is spread over three thematic areas: the representation of bodies and their metamorphosis; the relationship between individuals and technologies; and the links that are woven between bodies and the Earth.

The Biennale represents not only the quintessential manifestation of contemporary art, but it is a reflection of the introspective aspects of the human soul. Indeed, the selected works are often united not only by the theme chosen by the commission, but also by an invisible thread. Overall, the works are a physical representation of the artistic practices of one or more generations of artists, and this year in particular, it is even more evident.

After a two-year pause during Covid-19, it is possible to read in the works not so much a reflection on the health care system or about Covid-19, but rather as an opportunity and an ability to transform reality into something magical, dark, ironic, and grotesque.

A particular element within this year’s 59th Biennale is precisely this return of many of the artists in the many pavilions to a type of art that is more connected to their roots and territory.

This is happening because the lockdown and disruption of physical movement and exhibitions due to the closure of museums, has led individuals to reconnect with their culture of belonging by bringing their personal history with them.

But they do not do so to escape from reality or turn their backs on the present and politics, but rather use the lens of introspection, the magical and the fantastic to read what is outside. Much like Carrington, who used figures in metamorphosis that reflected coeval society, not really as a refuge but as a means of talking about it.