Discovering Brussels Canal

Just in my last post I mentioned the "missing water element" in Brussels, but of course, there is the canal. However, it is quite well hidden, and it was only a month ago, when I went to see the Brussels Affordable Art Fair at Tour & Taxis exhibition complex, I finally saw it. The neighborhood seems to have developed in recent years and some nice apartment buildings have been built along the canal. Unfortunately, the full potential of the neighborhood is all but used.

The canal is only a few hundred meters away from the cool neighborhoods of Dansaert and Sainte-Catherine, but it is also a clear social border that divides different communes. Just after the canal, you find the infamous commune of Molenbeek, which is known for high rates of poverty, social problems, and concentration of immigrants. You don't need to live long in Brussels to hear about Molenbeek and how it should be avoided. It is among the poorest communes in whole Belgium, but only a walking distance from the fancy shops of Avenue Louise, which only highlights the drastic inequalities in the Brussels region.

I must admit that only now, looking more closely at the map, I realize that this is where Molenbeek starts. I only walked along the canal so I didn't venture more inside to the neighborhood. By the canal, it was rather nice.

My destination was the Affordable Art Fair, an annual art fair where you can buy contemporary art with a more modest budget (I think the upper limit is 6 000 Euros, but most pieces were around 1000 Euros). I can definitely recommend this event even for those not planning to do any art purchases. Below some nice sculptures that caught my attention. Next February again!

Finding the sophisticated metropolis

On my fourth day in Hanoi, I started getting more used to the traffic and crossing the streets felt like part of the tourism sport. In general, I strated liking the city a bit. And more was to come. I had read an interesting article on the New York Times about the contemporary art scene in Hanoi, "The Awakening of Hanoi", and I was inspired to look at some bits of this awakening. I followed my dorm mate's advice and visited Mai Gallery and Apricot Gallery. I have to admit, I was impressed. For 3000 dollars you could buy some pretty great paintings (next door they were being copied by lesser talents). I especially fell in love with Nguyen Van Cuong's powerfully coloured paintings of Vietnamese women.

My art tour was followed by an espresso (oh, it felt good: even though Vietnam is a huge coffee producer, the coffee here is extremely sweet, almost tasting like hot chocolate, the Italian coffee snob in me speaking again) in a little coffee house, La Place, next to St. Joseph's cathedral. The neighbourhood around the church gave me a glimpse of that sophisticated Hanoi some articles were writing about. I was sitting next to three local hipsters that really caught my attention with their cool clothes and fashionable hair styles. I started talking with them. It turned out that one of the guys, Nick (right in the photo), was actually a fashion designer himself and sold his clothes in La Cage, in the very expensive neighbourhood close to the opera (he's photos are all over La Cage's website). Perhaps, an avantguard of Vietnamese fashion. Nick had lived in London and spoke perfect English with a Brittish accent. I felt bad in my crappy traveller's clothes. I quite didn't understand before arriving here that Hanoi is actually a capital just like any other, and as in London or Paris, people don't walk around in trekking shoes but girls are wearing high heels of 10 cm. Nick however noticed my Marimekko bracelet and with a sparkle in his eyes admitted that he was a big fan of the Nordic design (maybe I pushed it a bit though...).

Mausoleum.

Contemporary art, espresso, and local fashion designer, not all that bad for getting into Hanoi's sophisticated side. Well, let's not exaggerate, I also visited Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, one of the creepiest tourist site's ever and got into the socialist side of Vietnam as well. After queuing for one hour in a strict order kept by many soldiers in their white costumes, I spent 20 seconds around HCM's body (not that I had wanted to contemplate the waxy body any longer). I was almost laughing out loud; the idiot stuff you need to do when you're a tourist... Next to the mausoleum, there's also a museum dedicated to HCM. It's only slightly less weird than the mausoleum but definitely worth a visit. It's quite unlike any other museum I've visited. On display were many installations and documents that introduced HCM's ideas and achievements to the visitor mostly in a very symbolic level. It was socialist propaganda in almost a cute format that made it feel very unreal.

Ho Chi Minh.

The text for this weird display read: "The symbols of nature in its beauty contrasted with industrial plants in this hall represent Uncle Ho's expectation that Young People shoulder the reponsibility for the protection and preservation of peace and the environment, and prevention of aggressive and destrucive wars." Well said, even though the Alice in the Wonderland kind of a display is pretty funny.

Overwhelmed by Contemporary Art in Venice

I visited the prestigious contemporary art salon Venice Biennale during two cold days in the beginning of November (and thus contirbuted to the record attendance or more than 370000 visitors). I have to admit that I’ve never been a huge fan of contemporary art and I often lack the motivation of even trying to understand it. However, my first experience of Venice Biennale was an inspiring opportunity to discover the amazing variety of contemporary art. Well, I’m not saying that I didn’t sigh in exasperation every now and then or that I didn’t fail to understand a few times which items were actually part of the show and which ones just belonged to the exhibition place.

The setting itself is of course magnificent as the exhibitions take place in the beautiful Giardini and in the Arsenal where you only have a limited access outside the Biennale. Moreover, some individual countries have their exhibitions scattered around the city in old palazzi and if the art is not worth the search and walk through the tiny streets, the view or the exhibition place itself can be awarding. It is also a great way to get to know the city’s less visited areas better.

This exhibiton by Marialuisa Tadei was in a church.

View from a palazzo.

All in all, Biennale feels like an attraction park designed for adults. Instead of hotdogs you drink overprized prosecco and instead of getting all dizzy in a rollercoaster you get the same feeling after hours and hours of light installations, video projections, wax models, manipulated photographs and even some traditional paintings. After two years of admiring Italian Renaissance art in Florence it can be difficult to understand the beauty or message of an abstract 3-dimensional (art) piece therefore I certainly needed to change my criteria for evaluation. But normally the first impression was the most important one – the immediate beauty or cleverness of the piece.

This complex geometrical work is by Tomas Saraceno. I immedately loved it. Just for the amazing form.

Again, without any deeper thoughts, I thougt this photo collase in Belgium's pavilion was somehow inventive, combining flowers collected in urban areas with photos of the place where the plant was picked.

The exhibition guide’s explanations on the works almost ruined these instant experiences as the curator’s far-fetched interpretations imposed a deeper societal meaning for each work. This obscured the simple idea that a normal viewer achieved by obviously doing the error of thinking that art could also be just art and abstract sculpture is not necessarily a form of anti-capitalist revolution or illustration of the precariousness of social networks.

This was instead something I'm not interested at all. Wasn't this invented in the 1960's...

This, however, was funny and so suitable for the ruined house where the exhibition took place.

Even though art doesn't need to be a political statement or artist's interpretation of social problems, I think that Nordic pavilion was an excellent combination of message and aesthetic form. The pavilion was also hugely covered in media as it focused on the current economic crisis with a little bit of humour, creativity and courage. The whole pavilion was transformed into a glamorous house of an art dealer now drowned in the swimming pool in front of the pavilion. Fantastic!

Inside the art dealer's house.

Tom of Finland's interpretation of David. Decadence and economic crisis!

In order to see how the Biennale has changed during its more 110 years, the British Council's website is a great source of information displaying timeline and images of all the British pavilions. The first salon in 1895 doesn't seem very shocking...