Biennale Arte 2022: June Crespo

After being invited as a guest artist, June Crespo (Pamplona, 1982) will take part in the 59th Venice Biennale (Biennale Arte 2022). The international showcase of contemporary art will feature 213 artists from 58 countries, and more than 1,400 works of art.

‘The Milk of Dreams’, a title taken from a book by surrealist writer and painter Leonora Carrington (1917-2011), is the name of this year´s exhibition, which has been delayed for a year due to the pandemic. In her book, Carrington describes a magical world where life is constantly re-envisioned through the prism of the imagination.

How is the definition of the human changing? What constitutes life, and what differentiates plant and animal, human and non-human? What are our responsibilities towards the planet, other people, and other life forms? And what would life look like without us? In the words of exhibition curator Cecilia Alemani, “these are some of the guiding questions for this edition of the Biennale Arte, which focuses on three thematic areas in particular: the representation of bodies and their metamorphoses; the relationship between individuals and technologies; the connection between bodies and the Earth.”

June Crespo´s work falls within this same context. In her pieces, Crespo uses sculpture to create a language that evokes the body and its relationship to architecture. Holes, passages, limits, circulation and remainders are some of the terms often heard to refer to the artist´s production. Her sculptures and images are based on precarious materials, an economy of means and on the importance of being by doing.

Using fibreglass, resin, ceramics and bronze, she cuts, divides, enlarges and recombines elements and materials, creating new intuitive forms that allow viewers to explore their own interpretation.