On the occasion of the 56th Venice International Art Biennale, which will open in May in conjunction with the Milan International Expo, India and Pakistan will be present in a unique shared participation.
The prestigious Palazzo Benzon on the Grand Canal will be home to the exhibition My East is your West, supported and curated by Feroze Gujral of the Gujral Foundation, India, which will bring together the Indian artist Shilpa Gupta and the Pakistani artist Rashid Rana. As an official collateral event of the 56° Venice International Art Biennale, the project is closely integrated with the vision of Okwui Enwezor, the Biennale’s curator for 2015. His statement to “offer the world a global sounding board”, and the Biennale’s title of All the World's Futures, invite us to reflect on the role the visual arts play in tracing meaningful elements from the upheavals of our time.
The project promoted by The Gujral Foundation represents an unprecedented initiative, far-sighted and full of implications that go way beyond a mere 'event' in a contemporary art programme.
Martina Mazzotta of the Fondazione Antonio Mazzotta, Italian partner foundation in the initiative, shares with Romeo Orlandi of Osservatorio Asia the curatorship of the project’s collateral events.