In the Arsenale part of the Cecilia Alemani main exhibition of the Venice Biennale, titled “Milk of Dreams”, the best is perfectly preserved for the end.
Right before heading out, Alemani Precious Okoyomon gave themselves a whole big room—something only a few of the other main show participants could tell. In the installation titled To see the earth before the end of the world (2022), the artist created an environment in which mysterious characters loom. Kudzu and sugarcane grown in soil appear everywhere. Live butterflies mingle with the plants around them. In the midst of all these running rivers of water that make gentle sounds as they flow.
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This isn’t the first time Okoyomon has worked with kudzu, an invasive vine native to parts of China and Japan. This species was first introduced to the American public in 1876 at a World’s Fair in Philadelphia, and several decades later, the United States government used it to combat soil erosion. Now, however, it has become something of a cannabis-like thing for Southern Americans, which is growing rapidly and often in ways that are difficult to impede.
But the kudzu in Okoyomon’s work is hardly evil. If anything, he looks a lot like the protagonist we’re supposed to sympathize with. Like most other parts of this installation, kudzu has a name: Resistance is an atmospheric condition.
In the hands of the Okoyomon, the transplant of kudzu is a form of protest against colonialism. While it is likely that his growth was contained in the Biennale, one can imagine a context that was not. And this room is unlike any other room in the exhibition – it seeks to depict a world in which plants have taken over, displacing the humans around them. (Visitors to the Okoyomon installation will need to take some care to stick to narrow lanes and avoid stepping on dirt around them.)
As for the sculpted statues that appear everywhere, they are made of wool, yarn, dirt and blood — ominously — according to biennale organisers. Sculptures produced on a larger scale and without facial features may look intimidating, but fear not. Their names show that they come in peace and that, if anything, they are meant to be beautiful: Efua, the sun is my own darkness Swallowed by the flames an angel reborn And Omoehi, son of fate I am blood They are their nicknames.
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