The list of artists selected to take part in the 55th International Art Exhibition in Venice has been announced. This year’s show, The Encyclopedic Palace, is curated by Massimiliano Gioni and takes its inspiration from a design patent filed in 1955 by self-taught Italian-American artist Marino Auriti for his Palazzo Enciclopedico – an imaginary museum that would house all the world’s knowledge.
Gioni’s ambitious show – featuring 150 artists from 37 countries – aims to bring together examples of artworks past and present in a ‘temporary museum’ that reveals approaches to organising and visualising human knowledge and our experience of the world.
“The Encyclopedic Palace is organised following the typical layout of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cabinets of curiosities,” Gioni says. “Just like Auriti’s Palace, these baroque proto-museums brought together man-made and natural wonders to construct visual compendia of the world through a science of elective affinities and magical sympathies. This associative process of knowledge … draws interesting parallels between the wunderkammer and today’s culture of hyper-connectivity.”
Amongst Gioni’s selection are: Ed Atkins, Phyllida Barlow, Alice Channer, Tacita Dean, Roger Hiorns, Mark Leckey, Sarah Lucas, Helen Marten, Steve McQueen, Tino Sehgal, James Richards, Cathy Wilkes and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.
Further details and full list of participating artists at www.labiennale.org
