ArtReview sent a questionnaire to artists and curators exhibiting in and curating the various national pavilions of the 2015 Venice Biennale, the responses to which are being published daily in the lead-up to the Venice Biennale opening.
Paz Errazuriz is representing Chile. The pavilion is in the Arsenale (Artiglierie).
What can you tell us about your exhibition plans for Venice?
I will be exhibiting an extract of three photographic series that have never been shown completely before (though two of them were previously published in books). Adam’s Apple documents a group of transsexuals resisting integration into the dictatorship’s uncompromising gender rules; Soul’s Infarct is a series about inpatients at a psychiatric hospital who fell in love, contrasting their lack of logic or reason to love, a force that is illogical for everyone; and The Light That Blinds Me, the only series that is in colour, was conceived around families suffering from congenital disorders, often connected with incest, which impair vision, meaning sufferers are only able to see black and white.
Are you approaching this show in a different way as to how you would a ‘normal’ exhibition?
It is a complicated process having to face an audience so vast!
What does it mean to ‘represent’ your country? Do you find it an honour or problematic?
This experience is very important to me as it puts the work within the context of being a women who worked at a particular time in our country and can now be seen with perspective and distance. Though I’m doubtful that Chile is represented within the work, since the curatorial project was selected, the work is assumed as part of Chile’s cultural scene. It is an honour, but it is a challenging one.
What are your earliest or best memories of the biennale?
I haven’t been to the biennale before.
You’ll no doubt be very busy, but what else are you looking forward to seeing?
I am very interested in knowing the work of artists who I would not have a chance to meet otherwise; to see the original works is a great luxury and I could not list all those that interest me. To see how my work functions within this context will be interesting and challenging too.
Read all responses to the Venice Questionnaire 2015 edition published so far
Read all 30 responses to the Venice Questionnaire 2013 edition
Online exclusive published 23 April 2015.
