Arts & International Affairs: 2.3: Autumn/Winter 2017 | Page 79

THE SCALES, POLITICS, AND POLITICAL ECONOMIES OF CONTEMPORARY ART BIENNIALS
that this illustrates a struggle of finding a consensus about how contemporary art should
represent the nation. In the 1950s, the Australian Contemporary Art Society saw the
Venice Biennale as an opportunity to “increase Australia’s links with the international
art scene” (Scott 2003:59). But while the Biennale’s nature as “a platform for nationalist
aspirations and for establishing the canon of each respective country’s art” was acknowl-
edged, the status of abstract art as a vehicle of national representation was contested. Be-
ing too international, contemporary art was seen to lack “distinct national flavor” (Scott
2003:62).
Today, it is common for artists and other art world actors to explicitly take distance
from national framings. The concept of national representation is also being increasing-
ly problematized in practices and discussions surrounding biennials. In 1994, Manifes-
ta—the “roving European Biennial of Contemporary art”—emerged to problematize
place-boundedness and to map out a “new cultural topography” in the aftermath of the
Cold War (Manifesta www document; Filipovic 2014:50). The 26th edition of the São
Paulo biennial was framed as a critique of national representation and an attempt to at-
tain “freedom from the great geopolitical machine ruling cultural bureaucracy” (Lagna-
do 2006:17; see also Vogel 2010:7). Some scholars, however, insist that the framework
of nations and states should not be ignored in analyses of biennials. Chin-Tao Wu, for
example, claims that it is still possible to interpret the national pavilions at the Venice
Biennale in relation to the geopolitical power of various countries (Wu 2007:381; see
also Rodner & Preece 2016). A similar claim is voiced by Tang, according to whom the
institutional privileging of powerful states is a defining feature of the Venice Biennale.
The Biennale’s curatorial rhetorics o ften resonate with postcolonial critiques and are full
of intentions to level cultural hierarchies. However, the less powerful countries with tem-
porary pavilions are still situated farther away from the valuable locations, such as the
main entrance. As Tang notes, this “defines visibility within a field of competing nation-
al representations, as most visitors ultimately view pavilions close to the main venue”
(Tang 2007:253).
The way in which the concept of national representation is simultaneously reproduced
and problematized through biennial practices is a focal point of much of current research
on biennials. As Caroline A. Jones aptly suggests, biennials are an enlightenment proj-
ect, which “secures a kind of nationalism in the act of transcending it” ( Jones 2010:76).
Although it has become common to claim that the national pavilion system of the Ven-
ice Biennale is obsolete, nations remain central. The concepts of nation are needed at
the same time as the “desire for the world picture” prompts subjugating terms such as
“nation” and “internationalism” to critique ( Jones 2010:83; see also Basualdo 2010
[2003]:129). Chu-Chiun Wei’s (2013) analysis of the changing curatorial strategies of
the Taiwanese pavilion—or collateral event—also shows the character of contemporary
art biennials as a flexible mechanism. They both reproduce and reject the modernist
idea of nation states. Rafal Niemojewski highlights that biennials vary in their relation-
ship to the world of nation states. Founded as a “celebration of the nineteenth-century
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