Venice Biennale 2001

The choices of the artists at this 49th International Art Exhibition are not determined by any set theme; it is rather the artists themselves who rep¬resent a dimension with their works. So, after dAPERTutto, we come to a Platea dell'umanita. The term 'platea' has several meanings in Italian: a raised surface; a base and foundation; a platform. The Visual Arts Biennale as a platform of humanity. This is the idea.

In the 1950s an exhi¬bition entitled Family of Man travelled around the world. We would like to reconnect to this at the beginning of the new millennium, but the chances of all individuals constituting a family are not promising, despite the faith in globalisation and the breaking down of all kinds of walls. Each day new conflicts are born - for ethnic, religious or political reasons - which give rise to wars. Today's artists react differently to those of a decade ago: they no longer make sporadic assertions of their own identi¬ty, but appeal to what is eternal in man, on the basis of local rootedness, the only thing able to give weight to and legitimise this appeal. And the centuries-old conflict between abstraction and figuration seems to have been definitively filed away. The cognition of time and space, and of space that makes time, has become an asset of all, so much so that some committed artists have already managed to once more free themselves from the power of autonomy, to find the path towards behaviours, ways of seeing and desires that are common to humankind. This is a process that can take place gently or with turmoil; that may have an aesthetic claim or represent an unmasking. The 49th Exhibition intends offering this verifiable connotation of freedom.