When politics invades art, an Israeli artist seeks common ground at the Venice Biennale

Art should, by definition, occupy lofty spheres way above petty politics and other forms of consciousness manipulation for ultimately Machiavellian ends. But – just in case we hadn’t noticed – it ain’t a perfect world.

Art can – should – grant us some respite from all of the negative existential detritus, and from the anxieties that come with everyday life, especially in this relentlessly troubled part of the world. We should be able to glean a sliver or two of hope that there is something unsullied out there after all, something that offers us a life raft that can raise us up above the daily grind and morass of self-interest shenanigans.

Before we dug into the unpleasant underbelly, I wanted to get something of a handle on what Fainaru brought to the Biennale plate, with his installation-based spread on show at the Arsenale facility. It opened there on May 9 and runs through November 22.

The immediate impression, on viewing the grand assembly, is of an association with black milk, a symbolic liquid that fuses life and death, and matter and spirit.

In Fainaru’s work, black water drips into a rectangular pool, forming a quiet space of delineated emptiness that invites contemplation and lingering presence.

The pool prompts thoughts of ink, which naturally leads one to consider writing and memory, thus binding the artistic experience to collective and individual consciousness.

The explanatory text that goes with the installation notes that the first printed edition of the Talmud was produced – by a Christian printer in the early 16th century – in the canal-strewn city that hosts the biennale. That seminal event, it says, turned the Talmud into “a living, open and continuously evolving visual text.”

With that very much in Fainaru’s mind, “the installation unfolds in the tension between presence and absence, calling for engagement with the experience of time, memory, and sustainability.”

The artist’s choice of creative point of reference, he says, goes beyond pure imagery. “This is not the first time that there has been a connection between my artwork and Paul Celan. He is considered a great poet, but I also identify with him in terms of what he represents. He represents Jewish identity, among his several identities. He was a Holocaust survivor, and so were my parents. So we have a common denominator.”

Fainaru also says there was no disciplinary divide to be navigated. “His writing is very visual. There are all sorts of sentences in his poems which I perceive visually, three-dimensionally.”

That includes the Venice installation core. “Milk is white, so when he talks about black milk, that conjures up thoughts of death, the Holocaust, the purity of milk which has been defiled.”

That, for Fainaru, leads straight into one of the burning existential issues of the day. “There is the ecological aspect. They are polluting the world, poisoning it, destroying it. We are poisoning ourselves, too, so there is something current and visceral about the poem as well.”

Fainaru’s immersive approach to Celan’s writing takes him into less obvious domains. “He expressed evil in a very poetic and limited way, very abstractly. That impacts me. In my own way, even though we are talking about a different discipline, I also try to convey the meaning of evil, abstractly. I talk about loss and the Holocaust, but not through corporeal means but by means of associative connections.”

His approach to documenting current affairs is antithetical to the mainstream media’s strident, angled presentational line. “The media outlets are vitriolic and violent. They are always trying to scare us, and show us very shallow material which is not always connected to reality. They create a reality within reality.”

Since taking up temporary residence at the biennale, Fainaru has had more than his fair share of media encounters.

“I think I have given over 100 interviews,” he says. “There were journalists who were friendlier than others. There were tough, provocative questions.”

Fainaru clearly had to keep his wits about him, to avoid providing hostile journalists with cannon fodder for anti-Israel diatribes.

The general approach was, it seems, to treat Fainaru as Israel’s representative in areas that have absolutely nothing to do with his line of work and with the seasoned collateral that made him an appropriate choice for the Israeli slot in Venice.

The time-honored adage in American entertainment circles holds that there is no such thing as bad publicity, as long as they don’t misspell your name. The saying “I don’t care what the newspapers say about me, as long as they spell my name right” is generally attributed to 19th-century showman-philanthropist-politician P.T. Barnum. “I got so much media attention, while other artists had to beg to get people and journalists to come to see their work,” Fainaru smiles wryly.

He also managed to see the upside of the politically motivated media cacophony.

Then again, having to field journalistic attacks and protesters at the art world’s most prestigious event can wear you down.

“I didn’t know what to do,” says Fainaru. “The Foreign Ministry didn’t interfere with my artistic decisions, but I didn’t get any support for my dealings with the media either.”

Betwixt the media cacophony, there were some carefully crafted creations to consider inside the Arsenale, which, by the way, is serving as the temporary Israeli exhibition premises at the Biennale while renovation work on the permanent pavilion drags on and on. No doubt, once again, when it comes to supporting our cultural ventures, the national budget is found wanting.

If members of the public actually want to see Fainaru’s work, and manage to negotiate their way into the Arsenale, they will leave the hubbub behind and find themselves in an oasis of peace and tranquility, where they may, if they so wish, be able to get a breather and reflect on the installation and consider their own inner world.

Rose of Nothingness, curated by Avital Bar-Shay, serves as a remedial furlough through the installation’s dynamics and the calming vibe it exudes. Fainaru feels it goes against much of the current artistic-promotional grain, and is something of a throwback into quieter, less financial bottom-line-oriented, more gentle climes.

I suggested that dropping by the Venetian pavilion might be a good idea for all us post-Oct. 7 traumatized Israelis.

“Israelis do visit, but, like Israelis, they want to cram in as much as they can,” he chuckles. “I don’t know how much time they devote to the works in the exhibition.”

Any artist would like his viewers to tarry a while, to consider the aesthetics and philosophical and emotional underpinning of their exhibits, rather than racing past them in an attempt to tick as many sightseeing boxes as they possibly can.

“Time has significance,” Fainaru posits, “time from the past, memory time, time to be with yourself. You need a place to calm down in, calm others, with everything that is going on around us.”

Ain’t that the truth. And he has provided us with everything we might need to soothe our savage, war-torn breast. Rose of Nothingness, for example, comprises an overhead linear system of pipes, fitted with agricultural drippers, that releases water in measured droplets into a rectangular basin below. The water circulates in a continuous loop, establishing a constant rhythm of drip and pause.

As the biennale notes have it: “This subtle cadence evokes breathing – suspension and renewal – drawing the body into an acute awareness of duration. A reservoir of memory, a bodily experience of presence and duration, pulsates, breathes, and renews in a fragile equilibrium of time and consciousness.”

That sounds thoroughly enticing, and curative, and just what the doctor ordered to drop our pulse down a gear or two and introduce an eye-of-the-storm hiatus amid the relentless fight-or-flee continuum that is the general existential state of affairs in this country.

The work features a wall-mounted clock with backward-moving hands. That suggests intervention in reality, and the possibility of imposing our will on the natural order.

That is something of a leitmotif of Fainaru’s oeuvre.

“The work emphasizes the elusive quality of time and the stratified meanings it carries as a subjective state of consciousness shaped by countless personal and environmental factors,” the curatorial text illuminates.

Nostalgia may not be what it once was and, indeed, may involve a modicum of fantasy, of longing for a past that in fact never existed. Renowned 20th-century British writer W. Somerset Maugham put it neatly when he noted that some people are cast into certain life circumstances by providence: “They have always a nostalgia for a home they know not,” he observed.

“The installation relates to the passage of time, offering a journey in search of lost time,” Fainaru explains. “What appears as forward motion becomes backward movement. Tangible matter becomes memory. The work alludes to the impossibility of summing up or containing time, in the hope that the end point is also a point that preceded the beginning.”

Wishful thinking three years after that fateful day in our southern communities and its violent aftermath. But art can do that. Art can offer a crack in the flow of testing reality, an unexpected change of direction that can generate a fleeting emotional and cerebral watershed which may help us to adopt a more subjective view of some formidable baggage. That might just enable us to take a deep breath, a concomitant step back, and reflect on our experiences in a different, more manageable light.

Meanwhile, on the support front, Fainaru was delighted to welcome some political A-listers to his exhibition, including German Minister of State for Culture and the Media Wolfram Weimer.

He had some words of comfort after visiting the Arsenale.

“It is important for Germany to show solidarity with Israel and Israeli artists at the biennale,” he stated. “I was deeply impressed by the installation created by artist Belu-Simion Fainaru for the Israeli pavilion.”

Weimer’s Italian counterpart, Alessandro Giuli, also took the time to view the installation, as did some surprising – and very welcome – guests.

“I got a lot of support from Cuba. Their curator came over wearing a nice hat,” Fainaru chirps with a smile. “He told me he’d been asked to sign a letter calling for a boycott of [the exhibition of] Israel. He told them he only boycotts wars, not artists. He said he’d also praised me to other people, that I supported peace and Palestinians. He said I wasn’t the right person to attack. He also said they [boycotters] were very organized and had lots of financial backing.”

There were additional expressions of endorsement from unexpected quarters. “There were Lebanese who came to the Israeli pavilion and were very complimentary. They also said they hope there will soon be peace and that I can come to Lebanon to exhibit.”

There’s more. “The first visitors we had, as the pavilion opened, were Iranians,” Fainaru adds. “They got to us first thing in the morning. We had a wonderful exchange, like we were longtime pals. The warmest reception we got was from Lebanese and Iranians.”

Perhaps there is hope after all. All we need to do, so it seems, is get together on common ground – say, a shared love of art – thereby circumnavigating the shark-infested political waters, and all will be well. To quote late Beatle John Lennon’s anthemic “Imagine” number: “It isn’t hard to do.” ■