The Venice Biennale, as exhibitions of modern art go, it is considered to be one of the most – if not the most – prestigious. To have one’s work shown there solidifies one’s reputation in the art world and secures for the artist a place in history.

But not all work is considered equally for admission to this vaunted event. In fact, many artists of the indigenous variety are regularly excluded from the VB, despite impressive portfolios and intriguing, exciting work. As is often discussed in these pages, indigenous artists are faced with an uphill battle to be heard by an establishment that prefers them to be invisible, and therefore manageable. The opinions and themes of indigenous artists are often direct challenges to the status quo that is fiercely guarded by the establishment. Of course, there are those few that manage to pass entry into the mainstream art world, but as we know those are a few old men in a sea of Euro-trash that passes as “high art” artists these days.

This year, the Biennale did not host the members of the Requickening Project, who come from various backgrounds in the arts specific to Aboriginal art and its production. The artists -- Shelley Niro, photographer/filmmaker and invited participant in the 2003 Biennale; Lori Blondeau, performance artist and director of Tribe Inc.; Ryan Rice, artist, independent curator and co-founder of Nation To Nation and the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective --joined with Nancy Marie Mithlo, curator, academic and co-founder of the Indigenous Arts Action Alliance and Italian anthropologist Elisabetta Frasca with assistance from Mario di Martino in Venice, to form an active organization for the advancement of aboriginal art. Dedicated to mitigating the effects of commercial exploitation and marginalization of indigenous artists by the art-industrial complex, they set up shop at the University of Venice, borrowing some of the legitimacy and prestige offered by the Venice Biennale to its invited artists. Though friendly platitudes were offered by the Bienale organizers, the group was asked to delete reference to participation in, or as it were, during and in close proximity to, the 52nd International Art Exhibition from their press release. It was all very formal and polite – you can read it on the group’s MySpace page – but underscores the point that some artists are validated by institutional support while others are not.

There is much we can learn from the experience of the Requickening Project artists, which I would describe as a return to the uncommodified roots of the art interventionist movement before it was corrupted by legitimacy. The very name of the movement speaks to an element of subversion, and the movement in its original form was meant to add contrarian commentary on the themes and ideologies of the art in question. Illicit, unapproved interventions are the hallmark of the movement, and they not only questioned various established artistic orthodoxies but were also fertile events for exploring previously un- or under- explored themes. Politics, religion and identity are only a few of the many themes explored by artists of the interventionist movement.

In recent years, the movement itself has been sucked up by the establishment art world, with curators staging “interventionist” actions and exhibitions to the delight of the glitterati. While these exhibitions still further explore under-utilized paradigms and themes, they have effectively removed the subversive, anti-canonical nature of the movement, rendering it a mere orthodoxy of its own. Sure, much can be learned by an intellectual retooling of existing artworks, but having removed its teeth, the interventionist movement has been degraded to something the establishment can control, requiring permits and permissions to make points that were once intended to be wholly unexpected.

Uninvited and unapproved (well, at least by the Bienale organizers and only for this year…who knows about next), the artists of the Requickening Project staged a massive example of art intervention by staging their own public exhibition in conjunction with, but not officially part of, the Venice Biennale. Side-by-side, their competing and marginalized ideologies borrowed from the legitimacy of the Biennale to enhance the visibility of their work. Their show constituted, on a huge scale, guerrilla art in the interventionist vein, increasing their visibility and fulfilling the goals of the group in what I thought to be a rather instructive way. Unexpected interventions and piggy-backing on the legitimacy of large, prestigious shows are a perfectly valid and effective means of combating the problems of invisibility and marginalization of indigenous artists.

So, reduced to a sentence, what have learned from the actions of the artists of the Requickening Project? If you’re not invited to the party, go ahead – invite yourself.


Images by Nancy Marie Mithlo.