Martha Jungwirth 10 Highlights Of The Venice Biennale 2024: Collateral Events

By Joanne Shurvell

The world’s most prestigious contemporary art exhibition, the Venice Art Biennale, opened last week and runs until 24 November in two main locations, the Giardini and the Arsenale, as well as throughout Venice in museums, foundations, galleries, churches and palazzos. These “collateral events” are free and are mostly open through the fall. From stunning painting shows to sculptural installations, here are ten must-see exhibitions dotted throughout the city nicknamed "La Serenissima."

Martha Jungwirth, ‘Herz Der Finsternis’ At Palazzo Cini, Until September 29

Austrian artist Martha Jungwirth takes Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella Heart of Darkness, as the starting point for her recent body of work. The exhibition’s German title references Conrad’s book, which Jungwirth read as a young woman and explores the darkness and brutality of European colonialism in Africa. After visiting the Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration at the Palais de la Porte Dorée, a building constructed for the Paris Colonial Exposition of 1931, the tale found its way back into Jungwirth’s mind and these paintings are the result. Known for a palette that dwells in a corporeal and sensuous register of fleshy pinks and reds, the unexpected lush green and petrol tones of her latest works reference the dense green landscape of the Central African rainforest, which is described in vivid detail in Heart of Darkness.