Nine young artists you need to know at the Venice Biennale

For almost 125 years, the Venice Biennale has established itself as one of the world’s most respected and prestigious contemporary art exhibitions — if not the most. But even the greatest classical institutions need to introduce a batch of fresh inspiration every now and again in order to keep things relevant. Alongside established names at the international pavilions, the this year the festival is showcasing a number of exciting young artists, from performance artists to photographers. Here’s our pick of the must-know emerging names from the Biennale class of 2019.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan

Beirut-based artist and audio investigator Lawrence Abu Hamdan is exhibiting his acclaimed 20-minute video performance piece Walled Unwalled. An immersive and deeply emotive work based on the harrowing experiences at the Saydnaya prison in Syria, the video pieces together various accounts and legal narratives that revolve around evidence heard through the prison walls. Performances and reenactments are juxtaposed with a sombre monologue by Hamdan himself. Serving not only as physical boundaries, the walls in Hamdan’s film are shown to be symbolic of the divisions experienced in societies across the globe in times of political and social unrest.

Michael Armitage

The Promised Land marks Kenyan-born painter Michael Armitage’s first show in Italy. The artist, who now works between London and Nairobi, explores the contradictory dynamics and civil rights issues in his native Kenya, depicting scenes that range from daily life to political protests. The works weave Armitage’s own memories of growing up in Kenya with media representations to compare and contrast personal histories with socio-political narratives in order to challenge the myths surrounding Africa. Whilst paying homage to a rich artistic history, Armitage uses his artworks as a platform to open up discussions about moral and political issues such as the institutionalised homophobia still experienced in many African countries

Soham Gupta

Based in Calcutta, Soham Gupta’s work encompasses documentary photography, art and the written word with a focus on the themes of loneliness and isolation, abuse and pain, sexual tensions and existential dilemmas. Having already been shortlisted for several awards for his latest photo series Angst, he was also named as one of The British Journal of Photography’s 16 emerging photographers to watch in 2018. His raw and brooding portraits give a voice to the disadvantaged minorities living on the margins of Calcutta, all the while confronting the viewer with collective experiences of suffering, prejudice and injustice that play a role far beyond the borders of Gupta’s own home.

Martine Gutierrez

Martine Gutierrez lives and works in New York. A self-made muse, Gutierrez explores her identity as a trans Latinx woman of indigenous descent through her work as not only an artist but as a model, stylist, photographer, and founding editor of the magazine, Indigenous Woman. Interested in the fluidity of relationships and gender roles,  Gutierrez employs mannequins as her counterparts in an editorial photo series, entitled Body En Thrall, to explore the diverse narratives of intimacy. Life size figures and props stand in physical locations and present an off-kilter commentary about the very nature of reality. As Gutierrez changes expressions and registers, her gaze never diverts from the eyes of the viewer, whom she leads into her compositions almost as the third subject.

Frida Orupabo

Frida Orupabo is an artist and sociologist who lives and works in Oslo, Norway. Her collages of digital prints assembled from various online resources and archives explore themes of race, family relations, gender, sexuality, violence and identity. Her works shown at this year’s Biennale play with a subversion of expectations, addressing historical traumas and re-appropriating them in order to transcend social stereotypes. Orupabo presents a series that highlights the beauty of the black female body in powerful, intimate portraits and comments on the enduring legacy of post-colonialism. The artist highlights elements of femininity and sexuality in the archive images, which mostly comprise of “colonial photos,” to reclaim a sense of power for her subjects and to challenge the white gaze.

Avery Singer

New York-based artist Avery Singer blurs the lines between analogue and digital art with her large-format compositions that employ elements of abstraction and figuration. By projecting and airbrushing images created by 3D modelling software onto canvas, the artist plays with the appearance and disappearance of visible brushstrokes, “retaining the aura of mark-making” by unorthodox means. Having previously painted almost exclusively in black and white, Avery has introduced colour into her most recent works. The series portrays figures from the artist’s own life that are subtly distorted until they appear as cyborg-like beings behind a screen as though they might be ready to start moving again when the viewer presses play.

Mari Katayama

Mari Katayama’s self-portraits depict her in the centre of painstakingly arranged objects, either in intimate interior spaces or in vast, rugged landscapes. The objects vary in each piece, however specific motifs such as pillow-like limbs and mannequin elements only serve to draw attention to the core subject of Katayama’s works, her own body. Raised in Gunma, Japan, Katayama was born with a rare disease that affects her physical development, the artist, however, does not allow her experience as a differently abled woman to define her. Instead, it acts as a point of inspiration as the artist involves her own physicality in scenes that are reminiscent of classical artistic tropes and convey a certain warmth, sensuality and strength.

Korakrit Arunanondchai

Bangkok-born video and multimedia artist artist Korakrit Arunanondchai engages with a diverse thematic range that encompasses subjects such as history, authenticity and self-representation. No history in a room filled with people with funny names 5 marks a collaboration with New-York based artist Alex Gvojic for the Venice Biennale. The project features a three-channel film that deals with the infamous 2018 news story of a group of boys who were trapped in a cave in Thailand. Ideas of community lie at the heart of the dynamic film, which uses the story as a platform from which to reflect more deeply on contemporary geopolitics and the fragility of the historical narrative. Arunanondchai depicts a humanity that has lost its balance and needs to rekindle the connection between nature and spirituality.

Victoria Sin

The opening week of 2019 Venice Biennale has featured a new programme of performances, co-produced with the Delfina Foundation, that deal with questions of identity politics and intersectionality, including If I had the words to tell you we wouldn’t be here now by Toronto-born and London-based drag artist Victoria Sin. Sin’s work aims to analyse and subvert normative processes of desire, identification and objectification, depicting fictional narratives about the honest and often unsettling experiences of being seen. They employ drag and storytelling in their visual performance to question the relationship between language and thought. Performing a dialogue between a queer body and an instrumentalist, the artist highlights how language works to create and reinforce both self-identification and social misrepresentation.

The Venice Biennale 2019 runs through to 24 November across various venues.