Muntadas on Translation: I Giardini

by Antoni Muntadas, Antoni Muntadas (Artist)

In a year when Spanish curators directed the Venice Biennale for the first time, Antoni Muntadas, representing Spain in the Spanish pavilion, told a reporter that the Biennale "takes its ideas from international fairs. It connotes the theme park. There was exoticism, invention, the new... but by now it is an obsolete structure." Muntadas's On I Giardini, the latest in a series of often site-specific On Translation projects completed over the last 10 years, is here documented from its inception. Translation is a metaphor, as Muntadas states, "I am not talking about translation in a literal sense, but in a cultural sense--how the world we live in is a totally translated world, everything is always filtered by some social, political, cultural and economic factor... by the media, of course, by context and by history." Accordingly, I Giardini looks into the context and history of the Biennale's Giardini del Castello, delving into the transformations and "translations" it has undergone over time, and investigating Venice's status and the space that frames the Biennale. Muntadas notes, for instance, that a new Italian pavilion built on Mussolini's orders was replaced again after the war.

446 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2005

About the author

Antoni Muntadas (born in 1942 in Barcelona) is a multidisciplinary, media artist, sometimes also referred to as Antonio Muntadas or, simply, Muntadas. Since 1971, he lives and works in New York. Muntadas was a Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT,1977–1984, and is currently Visiting Professor with MIT Visual Arts Program. His work has been exhibited widely, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Venice Biennale, documenta 6 and documenta X.