The 59th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia and its programs are underway (April 23 to November 27, 2022) with a host of noteworthy firsts for the world's premier contemporary art event.

For the first time, the Biennale has a robust app with maps for in-person navigating and details for virtual viewers. Bloomberg Philanthropies’ free Bloomberg Connects mobile app includes insights on the more than 200 artists featured in The Milk of Dreams central exhibition and information on La Biennale’s 80 National Pavilions. It also includes photos, videos, audio content from artists and curators, and background information.

One artist to find on the app is Simone Leigh, whose history-making "Sovereignity" exhibition at the U.S. Pavilion is the country's first ever by a Black female artist and the first to be dedicated entirely to the experiences and contributions of Black women. Commissioned by The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston ahead of its 2023 exhibition on the artist, Leigh created a new series of sculptures in bronze, raffia, steel, ceramic, and more, including “Satellite,” a 24-foot bronze female form with a concave disc-shaped head. Her work extends thoroughly into the architecture, notably with an African thatched roof. 

Critic Jerry Saltz wrote on Instagram that Leigh's presentation is "astonishing in its incendiary deliverance of what America is built out of, by, on, invented from...". He continues, "This work is a mirror and a beacon, bridge and the thing bridged to. It is a fact unto itself. It needs no labels. It speaks clearly and convincingly in a language beyond words."

Eight countries are participating in the Venice Biennale for the first time in 2022, including Kyrgyzstan, the only country pavilion situated on the Island of Giudecca in Venice. Artist Firouz FarmanFarmaian presents "Gates of Turan" an immersive post-tribal textile installation that uses his socially engaged practice to explore the lived experience of nomadic communities in The Kyrgyz Republic. Firouz is also the nephew of Monir FarmanFarmaian, Iran’s most celebrated contemporary artist, who herself participated in the Venice Biennale 64 years ago in 1958.

Uzbekistan Pavilion, another inaugural pavilion, doesn't present any artworks but recasts the space as a garden of knowledge with a rotating program of workshops and public events. Curated by architecture and research studio Space Caviar, "Dixit Algorizm – The Garden of Knowledge" questions the prevailing western-centric narrative around the advancement of technology. Specifically, the algorithm which derives its name from al-Khwarizmi, a 9th-century polymath from Khwarazm a city in modern-day Uzbekistan who was responsible for the basis for innovation in algebra. 

The PinchukArtCentre and Victor Pinchuk Foundation quickly refocused their official collateral event in a month to become This is Ukraine: Defending Freedom at the Scuola Grande della Misericordia in Venice. A live address on YouTube from Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine will open the exhibition on Thursday.

The exhibit is in two "chapters" with monumental and emotional works from three artists who continue to live and work in Ukraine during Russia’s war,  including Yevgenia Belorusets, Nikita Kadan, and Lesia Khomenko. Their pieces are shown in dialogue with Ukrainian historical masterpieces, including works from Maria Prymachenko, Tetyana Yablonska, and an icon believed to be by Stefan Medytsky.

The second chapter presents international artists Marina Abramović, Olafur Eliasson, JR, Damien Hirst, Boris Mikhailov, and Takashi Murakami. President Zelenskyy also contributed an image for the exhibition with a personal quote presented across the national flag reading, "We are defending our Freedom."