The 54th Venice Biennale announced the list of artists selected by Bice Curiger

Under the curatorship of Bice Curiger, cofounder and editor-in-chief of the prestigious Parkett magazine and editorial director of TATE etc., the four-monthly publication of the Tate collection, the 54th Venice Biennale announced the list of artists selected to participate in the Biennale Exhibition entitled ILLUMInations. The list consists of 82 artists, most of these from Western countries, of whom 32 are women and 32 were born before 1975. Bice Curiger selected only 4 artists from Latin America: Gabriel Kuri (Mexico), Mariana Castillo-Deball (Mexico), Amalia Pica (Argentina), and Nicolás Paris (Colombia). The group of established artists and artists from other generations include the recently deceased German painter Sigmar Polke, Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri, Jack Goldstein, Gianni Colombo, and Jeanne Natalie Wintsch. In a recent statement, Curiger laid out the concepts behind his curatorship: "ILLUMinations underscore the intuitive gaze and illumination of thinking that emerges from the encounter between art and its ability to deepen perception. While the previous Biennale, entitled Making Worlds, emphasized the creative spirit at the constructive level, ILLUMintations emphasizes 'light' as an intellectual experience geared toward communicational exchanges. Attesting to the perdurability of its legacy, the Age of Enlightenment is also present in ILLUMinations." The exhibition will seek a dialogue between artists and their works through the project Meeting of Art, a series of seminars and encounters scheduled in June and during the fall that will include the participation of philosophers, theologians, and curators. Encounters between educators, students, and researches from several institutions have also been programmed under the project Biennale Sessions. Through the use of new promotion and communication methodologies and of the existing social networks, the Biennale will join the digital project started by recent biennials, with the objective of promoting their activities and interacting with the public. There will be three virtual competitions that will be launched through the Biennale¿s website: www.labiennalechannel.org - ILLUMinations- Photography: the best photograph of the exhibition (competition open only to accredited photographers). - ILLUMinations- Essay: the best critical essay on the show. - ILLUMinations- Video Clip: the best video on the theme of the exhibition. The Biennale will include 87 national pavilions, 10 more than in 2009, located around the Arsenal, where the exhibition curated by Kruger will take place. Seven countries will participate with their own pavilions for the first time: Andorra, Bangladesh, India, Iraq, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. Other countries will again participate after several decades of being absent, among these: Congo (absent since 1963), Costa Rica (absent since 1993), and Cuba (absent since 1995). The Istituto Italo-Latino Americano will present the exhibition entitled Between Forever and Never, curated by Alfons Hug. The artists selected are: Leticia El Halli Obeid ( Argentina), Narda Alvarado (Bolivia), Neville D¿Almeida (Brazil), Sebastian Preece (Chile), Juan Fernando Herran (Colombia), Sila Chanto (Costa Rica), Reyinier Leyva-Novo (Cuba), Maria Roja-Kiron (Ecuador), Wallerio Iraheta (EL Salvador), Regina José Galindo (Guatemala), Scultura Voudou (Haiti), Adán Vallecillo (Honduras), Julieta Aranda (Mexico), Rolando Castellon (Nicaragua) Humberto Vélez (Panama), Claudia Casarino (Paraguay), Fernando Gutierrez (Peru), David Pérez-Karmandaris (Dominican Republic), Martín Sastre (Uruguay), Alexander Apóstol (Venezuela), Alberto de Agostini (Italy), Gianfranco Foschino (Italy/Chile), Olaf Holzapfel, Mirta, Dionisia, Nelia, and Luisa Gutierrez (Germany/Wichi Community of Argentina), and Bjorn Melhus (Mexico/Norway). List of artists selected for the exhibition ILLUMInations in: