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MIT Professor Krzysztof Wodiczko exhibits 'Guests' at Venice Biennale's Polish Pavilion

Cambridge, MA... Krzysztof Wodiczko, professor in the Visual Arts Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is representing Poland at the 53rd Venice Art Biennale, taking place June 7-November 22, 2009. Wodiczko, who is also the director of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, is known worldwide for his large-scale, politically charged slide and video projections on architectural facades and monuments. In receiving this honor, Wodiczko becomes the third member of the Visual Arts faculty to represent his native country at the oldest and world's most prestigious art biennials.

Wodiczko's contribution at the Biennale is a projection in the Polish Pavilion titled "Goscie / Guests," The protagonists of the installation are immigrants, people who, not being at home, remain "eternal guests."

''Strangers" and "others" are key notions in Wodiczko's artistic practice, be it in the projections, the vehicles, or the technologically advanced Instruments that enable those who, deprived of rights, remain mute, invisible and nameless to communicate, gain a voice, make a presence in public space.

"I've done a lot of projects focusing on immigrants all over the world," Wodiczko told the MIT News Office. "My hope was that there would be no need to return to this topic. Unfortunately, we are facing new waves of xenophobia in Europe."

The projection, created specially for this 53rd international art exhibition in Venice, transforms the space of the Polish Pavilion into a place where viewers watch scenes taking place seemingly outside, behind an illusion of windows, their projection on the pavilion's windowless walls. The projections of scenes show immigrants washing windows, taking a rest, waiting for work, exchanging remarks about their tough existential situation, unemployment, and problems getting their stay legalized. Wodiczko plays with the visibility of immigrants, people who are "within arm's reach" and, at the same time, "on the other side," referring us to their ambivalent status, their social invisibility.

Biennale visitors are "guests" here too, of which they are reminded by the images of immigrants trying, from time to time, to peek inside. Both sides experience an inability to overcome the gap separating them. The project addresses the discourse of acceptance and legalization that is accompanied by often-restrictive immigration policies. Wodiczko worked with immigrants based in Poland and Italy, but coming from different countries of the world such as Chechnya, Ukraine, Vietnam, Romania, Sri Lanka, Libya, Bangladesh, Pakistan or Morocco.

In his Venice project, Wodiczko combines the unique experience of his earlier indoor projections, staged in galleries or museums, which opened the otherwise isolated art world to the outside world, with a performative nature of his outdoor projections which allowed participants to animate public buildings with images of their faces or hands and the sounds of their voices.

Joan Jonas also at Venice Biennale

Video/performance art pioneer Joan Jonas, professor of Visual Arts at MIT, is also at the Venice Biennale, for the first time as a participating artist. She presented "Reading Dante II," the culmination of a two-year period of working and collecting images for two projections suggested by Dante's early-fourteenth century work, "The Divine Comedy."

The first projection, a 40-minute poetic narrative and video based on fragments of Dante's work, is a complex montage that includes footage in which Jonas combines scenes from the woods of northern Canada, a performance in Italy, a modernist ruin built in a lava field in Mexico City and 1970s footage of deserted New York City streets. The video includes excerpts from performances/readings at the Sydney Biennale, Yokahama Triennale, and Boston's Isabella Gardner Museum.

The second projection is of chalk drawing shapes and forms suggested by Dante’s world onto a blackboard. These drawings are also traced on the walls of the installation.

Background on Wodiczko

Wodiczko is an internationally known artist and professor in the Visual Arts Program at MIT. As part of his directorship of MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies, Wodiczko heads the Interrogative Design Group that produces public art and design projects. Recently, Wodiczko received the 2006 Polish Katarzyna Kobro Art Award and the 2008 Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture. A major retrospective of his work was held in Caracas in 2007, and another planned for Osaka in 2010. Wodiczko has created over 70 projections of politically charged images on monuments and public buildings, including: The Hirschhorn Museum, Washington D.C. (1988), A-Bomb Dome, Hiroshima (1999), El Centro Cultural de Tijuana, Tijuana (2001), and the Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland (2005), and most recently in Bologna, Boston, and Caracas. Wodiczko has also developed a series of public intervention instrumentations, such as "Homeless Vehicle" (1988-89), "Alien Staff" (1992), "Aegis" (2000) and "Dis-Armor" (1999-present). Wodiczko’s work has been exhibited in international exhibitions including: The Kwang-ju Biennale, The Venice Architectural Biennial, and The Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial, as well as the 2009 Venice Biennale. Wodiczko was awarded the Hiroshima Art Prize for his contribution to world peace.