Kovaleva Parachutes into Venice

Katerina Kovaleva’s exhibition ‘Limbo’, held at Venice’s Cantieri del Contemporaneo, explores themes of uncertainty, eternity, and in-betweenness. Referencing Venetian old masters her installation blends art history with contemporary reflections on identity, fate, and the suspended state of humanity.

Moscow-born artist Katerina Kovaleva’s (b. 1966) exhibition ‘Limbo’ has just opened in Venice's Cantieri del Contemporaneo (CREA) in Giudecca. Curated by Olga Strada, former director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Moscow, ‘Limbo’ is part of the ‘Waiting Zone’ series, some of which was initially shown last year at Moscow’s Gulag History State Museum. Coincidentally, an installation shown there, entitled ‘If it rains. Allegory of Virtue and Nobility’, is currently on show at the ‘Personal Structures’ group exhibition in Venice's Palazzo Bembo.

All the exhibitions constitute a cycle. According to the artist, “as the work on the project has been going on for the past two and a half years, new developments appear in the context of the main concept. Each new space inspires the creation of new works, and the project is intended to be continued.”

In the centre of the room a parachute decorated with allegorical scenes from frescoes by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo is suspended from the ceiling with what at first appear to be buckets of water situated beneath it but which are in fact mirrors.

The focal point of Kovaleva’s creation is not to be found on the ceiling but within the mirrors below, which themselves cannot be seen or photographed. Here, in this in-between, the invisible parachutist, reflected in the bucket mirrors, awaits his or her landing in the company of Tiepolo’s gods. Kovaleva explains: “I have been using fragments from Tiepolo's frescoes for a long time, I like his attitude to space, his construction of the depth of the heavens, the degree of detachment of the sacred on the one hand and the greater proximity to the earthly on the other. There is a lot of movement of flesh in these heavens. Tiepolo is a Venetian artist; in his painting he seems to capture what is reflected in the Venetian water... here the sky is always duplicated and can change places.”

The CREA exhibition imbues the ‘Limbo’ effect with an even greater intensity, intended as it is, specifically for Venice. Kovaleva believes that “the average European does not need an explanation of the concept of limbo”, noting helpfully that “in the Catholic tradition, ‘limbo’ describes the state of uncertainty of the soul in the afterlife, not yet aware of its fate”.

This feeling of weightlessness is conveyed through six rectangular drapes displayed on the first floor from which the parachutists disembark. The sequence starts with a solitary figure situated close to the entrance, with the rest ending in a series of multiple silhouettes in the sky on the last drape. The latter is placed near the actual parachute which is attached to the wall at the bottom of the exhibition space.

On reaching the second floor, visitors are summoned back to earth, as they behold floating above them ‘The Triumph of Continents (after Giovanni Battista Tiepolo)’, which is composed of a Soviet era parachute and naval signal flags fixed to the ceiling.

Memory, contemplation and waiting are again invoked by references to the figures of Penelope, Odysseus’s wife, weaving a shroud in order to fend her suitors off while she awaits her husband, and the Rape of Europa, forever sitting on Zeus, transformed into a bull, while awaiting her destiny.

Space and time are suspended within Kovaleva’s artistic practice. Her art, quite literally, is eternal, as in her works tempus non fugit. The artist addresses the subjects of the Venetians Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Titian and Sebastiano Ricci, referencing works from such Venetian museum collections as Ca’Rezzonico or the Galleries of Accademia:‘Nobility and Virtue Overcome Ignorance’ and ‘Rape of Europa’, both by Tiepolo.

Kovaleva has created a site-specific Venetian exhibition. Establishing a dialogue with the immortals inscribes her into the context of the history of art and conveys yet another kind of eternity that comes with it. Not unlike Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’, this might be exactly the interest in eternity, the in-betweenness, that makes ‘Limbo’ so relevant today.

“I do not express my opinion about the politics directly, but I still address what’s happening,” Kovaleva asserts. In referencing Tintoretto and Titian, she questions the transformation of the destiny of Europa in that of Europe, much as the fate of the parachutists becomes ours. “The image of parachutists is a symbol of hope. The human soul, like a parachutist, is often in a state of uncertainty, suspended between heaven and earth, in a difficult, helpless state, when fate depends on unpredictable circumstances”, she explains.

The effect produced by the image, tricks the visitor into addressing the present as much as contemplating eternity. This offers a reminder of the show by the Ukrainian artist Zhanna Kadyrova (b. 1981), organized by Continua Gallery in parallel with the Venice Biennale in 2022.

In Kadyrova’s ‘Palianytsia’ life-size loaves of bread out of stone seemed to be edible, reminding of the fragile equilibrium between the living and the dead, personal and public, foreigners and locals. As in ‘Divine Comedy’, eternity and humanity seem to be inseparable, and the Venetian context favours the suggestion.

Just a few vaporetto stops from the Giudecca is the Biennale d’Arte di Venezia, entitled this year ‘Foreigners everywhere’. The name pays tribute to the works of the Italian-British collective Claire Fontaine. It addresses this state of suspension, applied to the search of identity and belonging. A bit further away, at the 81st Venice International Film Festival on the Lido, questions on humanity, the state, and the individual are vigorously buzzing around.