This year’s Venice Biennale is being billed as an event rooted in the now, in a world of conflict and division – or, as one newspaper put it, the celebration of global art will be full of “war, refugees, destruction”.
Another theme that runs through many of the pavilions is colonialism: both its legacy in the form of restitution debates, and Europe’s lingering presence – physically and psychologically – in those countries that were formerly colonised.
