Sunday, May 19, 2013

Holy See to exhibit for first time at Venice's Biennale Arts Festival

http://media01.radiovaticana.va/imm/1_0_692075.JPGThe Holy See is participating for the first time ever with its own pavilion at Venice’s 55th Biennale D’Arte, an international arts festival held every two years in the lagoon city. 

At a news conference in the Vatican, the President of the Pontifical Council for Culture, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, and other speakers described the reasons for the Holy See’s participation and spoke of the theme chosen for its exhibit.

“In his intervention, Cardinal Ravasi said the council that he heads holds contemporary art at the heart of its interests because it is one of the most important cultural expressions of recent decades.

The Cardinal told Vatican Radio that the Holy See wishes to rebuild an interrupted dialogue, or what was a kind of non-consensual divorce, that took place between art and faith, especially in the last century. 

It’s for this reason, he continued, that we want to try to create an authentic dialogue between religion and contemporary art that has new and dramatic forms of expression. 

 Cardinal Ravasi described this upcoming participation in Venice’s Biennale festival as an attempt to reconnect those very ancient and close links between art and faith in the world of culture.

The theme chosen for the Holy See’s exhibit is “Creation, Uncreation and Re-Creation inspired by the story told in the Book of Genesis. 

 The curator of the project was Professor Antonio Paolucci, Director of the Vatican Museums who also spoke at the news conference in the Vatican. He said a group of internationally renowned artists had been selected to illustrate the chosen theme, including the American artist Lawrence Carroll and the Czech photographer Josef Koudelka.

The Venice Biennale opens this years on June 1st and will run until November 24th with artists from scores of countries around the world exhibiting their work.”