COURTESY ICELANDIC ART CENTER
Israel and Iceland have both announced their plans for their 2017 Venice Biennale pavilions this week. Haaretz reports that Gal Weistein will represent Israel at the coming Biennale, while the Icelandic Art Center announced that Egill Sæbjörnsson will represent Iceland.
Known for his large sculptural environments concerning Israeli culture and politics, Weistein will be staging a new site-specific work for the Venice Biennale. According to the artist, the new installation will also somehow represent “the evolution” of his own work. The Israeli Pavilion will be curated by Tami Katz-Freiman, who was previously the chief curator of the Haifa Museum of Art.
The Icelandic Art Center’s announcement includes no details about Sæbjörnsson’s pavilion plans, although in the past the artist has worked with video and performance, taking on various personas in the process. His work mines video technology for its ability to trick the eye, and he uses it to make objects function in impossible ways. The pavilion will be curated by Stefanie Böttcher, and will likely be less radical than Christoph Büchel’s 2015 Icelandic Pavilion, a functioning mosque that was shut down mid-Biennale.