La Biennale di Venezia 60th International Art Exhibition | Kay WalkingStick, Anwar Jalal Shemza and Elda Cerrato

Hales is delighted to announce that Kay WalkingStick, Anwar Jalal Shemza, and Elda Cerrato are included in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Adriano Pedrosa.

 

Kay WalkingStick has five major landscape paintings on display in the Giardini, including Salmon River Valley (2023). Walkingstick (b.1935 Syracuse, NY) is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and has, over a six-decade career, made works which connect to the Native American experience. In her paintings she reclaims the land by overlaying the sites with designs of the indigenous people who have inhabited the area or live there now. Sublime vistas are painted with bands of traditional Native American patterning dancing on the surface, as if protecting them. The delicate presence of the brightly colored designs transform the panoramic vistas into actively spiritual sites that remain meaningful to many.

 

WalkingStick's solo exhibition, Deconstructing the Tipi is currently on view at Hales New York, through 27 April 2024.

 

Composition in Red, Green and Yellow Ochre (1963), a key, historic work by Anwar Jalal Shemza (b. 1928, Simla, India - d.1985, Stafford, England) is on display in the Giardini. His practice was informed by his migration - synthesising cultural references, from calligraphic forms and carpet patterns to the environments around him: Mughal architecture from Lahore, Pakistan and the rural landscapes of Stafford, England. In his compositions, layered elements are distilled into an intensive exploration of geometric abstraction and pattern, built up mostly using just two simple forms: the square and circle.

Shemza's solo exhibition, Heads is currently on view at Hales London, through 18 May 2024.

 

Elda Cerrato's 1971 painting Maternidad is from an important series exploring the mysterious figure of the Beta Being and is exhibited in the Arsenale. Cerrato (b. 1931 Asti, Italy - d. 2023 Buenos Aires, Argentina) was an Italian-born Argentine artist whose extensive oeuvre integrates fundamental connections between art, spirituality, scientific knowledge and politics. Through immersions into the unconscious, drawing on personal and collective memory, she connects to alternative concepts of the cosmos. In symbolic and political work Cerrato sensitively explores the transformative potential of art.

 

Cerrato's debut solo show at Hales New York will open later this year.

 

 

La Biennale di Venezia 60th International Art Exhibition