La Biennale di Venezia 2013, German Pavilion: Ai Weiwei, Romuald Karmakar, Santu Mofokeng, Dayanita Singh

The international art event La Biennale Di Venezia will take place for the fifty-fifth time from June 1 through November 24, 2013. For this occasion, Germany is not only switching pavilions with France, but is also showing artworks that focus on themes of intercultural and intellectual transference. Susanne Gaensheimer, director of Frankfurt's Museum of Modern Art, has curated a selection of work for the German pavilion by Chinese conceptual artist and regime critic Ai Weiwei, the German-French-Iranian film director and screenplay author Romuald Karmakar, the South African photographic artist Santu Mofokeng, and the Indian photojournalist Dayanita Singh. These artists are continuing in the vein of Gaensheimer's transnational approach from 2011 that presented Germany as playing an active role in a complex, global structure that benefits from international exchange.

Gaensheimer states: "The artists that I invited and their work represent various themes that result from the convergence of diverse ideologies and ways of life that have a large impact on us today. It was important to me that all of them succeed in expanding our perspectives to include the points of view of the "other'"even in ways that may be uncomfortable."

This official catalog of the German pavilion is as international as the work shown within it. It contains 14 bylined articles and detailed artist portraits as well as extensive photo features that explore Germany's contribution and its cultural and sociopolitical background. This content goes beyond the German perspective to put the featured work into the context of the current global art world.

Among the authors are academics from the fields of art and cultural science, curators, journalists, philosophers, writers, artists, critics, political scientists, patrons, and migration researchers who are debating art and (inter)nationality including Geoff Dyer, Jacques Mandelbaum, Santu Mofokeng, Uli Sigg, Mark Terkessidis, Ranjit Hoskote, Elke aus dem Moore, Aveek Sen, Francois Jullien, Simon Njami, Jeff Kelley, Achille Mbembe, and Gilles Kepel.

These critically sophisticated texts are put into visual form by Chris Rehberger, whose work also makes a clear contribution to their debate.


Since 2009, Susanne Gaensheimer has been working as the director of Frankfurt's Museum of Modern Art and has also been responsible for Germany's pavilion at the Venice Biennale. In 2011, the art historian accepted the Golden Lion award for Germany's contribution that was originally conceived by Christoph Schlingensief.
As a curator, Gaensheimer has worked on solo exhibitions by international artists such as Liam Gillick, Elizabeth Peyton, Olaf Nicolai, Tobias Rehberger, Rodney Graham, Lucy Gunning, Harun Farocki, James Coleman, Thomas Demand, Maria Eichhorn, Olafur Eliasson, David Goldblatt, David Claerbout, Andreas Hofer, and Cerith Wyn Evans.
She is also currently working as a curator of Vienna's MUMOK and is on the jury of the 2013 Turner Prize.

Chris Rehberger is a graphic designer, the director of the Berlin agency Double Standards, the co-owner of the music label Perlon, and the brother of artist Tobias Rehberger whose exhibition catalogs he sometimes designs. With Double Standards he has established his own distinctive graphic style, which can be seen in his posters for the Berlin Film Festival or the Haus der Kulturen der Welt.