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Venice Biennale 2022
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The women-dominated Venice Biennale has been criticised for sacrificing quality—revealing just how necessary such progressive projects really are

Described by some as a “politically correct” move, around 90% of the artists in Cecilia Alemani's exhibition 'The Milk of Dreams' are female

Ben Luke
27 April 2022
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The main show at this year's Venice Biennale was dominated by women artists such as Jana Euler—not everyone thought that was a good thing © Andrea Avezzu

The main show at this year's Venice Biennale was dominated by women artists such as Jana Euler—not everyone thought that was a good thing © Andrea Avezzu

A closer Luke

Ben Luke, our Contributing Editor and podcast host, weighs in on the pressing issues facing the UK art world and beyond

From the moment Cecilia Alemani announced the artist list for the Venice Biennale, the dominance of women was a talking point. Exclamations of excitement filled The Art Newspaper’s freelance writers’ WhatsApp group as artists such as Christina Quarles and Paula Rego were confirmed among the around 90%-female selection.

Yet immediately, mutterings of discontent seeped from the art-world woodwork. A major gallerist opined to me that Alemani’s Biennale was “politically correct”, a phrase that—like the more recent “virtue-signalling” and “woke”—is the refuge for those who see their prejudices challenged. On an opening day tour, I overheard a journalist probing Alemani in exasperated tones about the abundance of women.

Alemani responded calmly, with words similar to those she used when I asked about the show’s gender balance on The Week in Art podcast in February. The selection “came fluidly and naturally” she told me. “I’ve always worked with lots of women artists. When I wanted to invite a man, I invited him.” It was, of course, deliberately a woman-orientated list, partly because Alemani’s themes are informed by writers including Ursula Le Guin and Donna Haraway. But also, as Alemani said, “for the first 100 years of this prestigious institution, the percentage of women artists in the show was less than 10%, and in the last 20 years, it was around 30%”.

The Week in Art

Wonder women: curator Cecilia Alemani on what we can expect at the female-dominated Venice Biennale this year

Hosted by Ben Luke. With guest speaker Martin Bailey. Produced by Julia Michalska, Aimee Dawson, David Clack and Henrietta Bentall
Sponsored byChristie's

And yet it’s Alemani’s Biennale that is described by the Financial Times critic Jackie Wullschläger as “absurdly gender-unbalanced”. Even worse, despite praising artists including Rego, Precious Okoyomon and Simone Leigh, she goes on to write: “By choosing almost exclusively women, Alemani has paid a severe price in terms of quality, a cost obvious too in the contrast with many superb exhibitions by male artists across town.”

It’s one thing to decry the “academic character” of work in the show, its “stiffness” and “curious lack of sensuality”, as she does (though I couldn’t disagree more). What is absurd is to suggest that any perceived lack of quality is due to the artists’ gender rather than because of the work itself.

But then, to many of us who were in Venice for the opening week, it was unmistakable that any celebration of female creativity in The Milk of Dreams had jarringly raucous competition from male artists in august Venetian institutions. Not just in the shows themselves—including Anish Kapoor at the Accademia and Anselm Kiefer at the Doge’s Palace—but in the promotion, emblazoned across the venues, on ubiquitous posters and, most bombastically, on towering ad hoardings over churches undergoing restoration.

It’s a reminder, if one was needed, of the systemic dominance of men in art, and confirms just how vital progressive and corrective projects like Alemani’s excellent Biennale are.

Venice Biennale 2022A closer LukeExhibitions
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