African nations showcase art at Venice Biennale

In the heart of Venice, a little taste of Somalia lies behind the front door.

A room within this building has been dressed to look like a typical living room in the Africa nation.

It's Somalia's first time at the Venice Biennale.

Poetry lies at the heart of the presentation.

“Poetry is a very, very important way to deliver a message, to compose an idea, is the way generations to generations, Somalis were able to sort of transmit knowledge and stories. So poetry is the backbone of Somali social structures and history,” explains curator Mohamed Mire.

Representing the country are artists Ayan Farah, Asmaa Jamaa and Warsan Shire.

Hosted at Palazzo Caboto, the pavilion sits between the Giardini and the Arsenale and unfolds across three floors.

“I do tend to make quiet works, and meditative, serene. I don't always think of them when I'm making because them, sometimes it's really stressful and trying to source them from the location, but I want them to draw the viewer into that environment,” says Ayan Farah.

“And because a lot of the works I make are supposed to be how nature affects the human and how human interacts with nature. So I hope in the way I've installed them and the materials they're made of, it's going to draw you into that environment, even though you're not there.”

Gold, meanwhile, is at the center of artist Caroline Gueye’s research in the Senegal Pavilion, where visitors are invited to reflect on the value assigned to the precious metal, historically intertwined with the country’s history.

A material to which humanity has attached value, transforming it into something exclusive.

But what would the world look like if that perception changed?

“The potential of art is sometimes to reverse perspectives, because the very nature of gold is that it has value, and these values are what make people fight to preserve that value," says Massamba Mbaye, the pavilion's curator.

"But why do they fight? They fight simply over questions of perception, really. Perhaps other peoples, or even in another universe, which is a possible universe, would have reasons not to fight for this metal, would have reasons to use it for something else.”

At the Ethiopian Pavilion, the country’s second participation at the Biennale, artist Tegene Kunbi paints silence as both a social and political condition.

A silence expressed through monumental abstract works bursting with color.

“The idea for this exhibition is it's from the shape of silence. How to create a silence, silence is not absence, silence is presence. You’ll see these abstractions (works), the colors. Silent art colors, silent art forms,” the artist says.

South African artist Gabrielle Goliath narrowly avoided having her work silenced altogether.

Her installation became the focus of a dispute with South Africa’s Ministry of Culture, which her decision to include a tribute to Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada as divisive.

Thanks to support and solidarity from fellow artists and members of the public, Goliath was ultimately able to bring her work to Venice, where it is now on view inside the Church of Sant’Antonin.