The exterior of the Canada pavilion at the Venice Biennale is draped with hundreds of blue-beaded strings suspended from the roof lintels and cascading down the brickwork walls. Inside are thousands more in sunset hues veiling the pavilion interior.
The strings are threaded with minute seed beads - tiny objects that carry a weighty history. Artist Kapwani Kiwanga explores the pivotal role of these Murano-made glass beads in the history of global trade and their “complex legacy”.
But for an installation set in Venice, there is surprisingly little acknowledgement of the significance of seed beads in the city’s own economic, social and artistic history. Indeed, the art of glass beads has been designated as UNESCO intangible heritage.
For those who fought to have Murano’s glass beads recognised as such, the failure to mention this in the pavilion’s information boards is a glaring omission.
Canada pavilion highlights the trading power of Murano’s tiny glass beads
Perline di conteria, or seed beads, were produced in Murano from the 15th century and became a coveted currency for Venice’s global trade in the centuries that followed.
In Trinket, Kiwanga delves into the bartering power of the beads, exchanged for gold, bronze, palm oil and enslaved people in Africa and the Americas. With the backdrop of the bead fringe, four sculptures extend the discussion.
The most striking is Transfer I (Metal, breath, palm oil, beads), where a beam of black steel arches over a sphere of blown glass, the latter representing the breath of human lives bought by beads.
‘Trinkets’ with UNESCO heritage status
At the heart of the installation is the exposure of the “disparities in the attributed value of these beads in the past.”
“In the research, we came across several mentions of European traders considering glass beads as mere trinkets that they would trade for resources considered highly valuable under European standards,” says curator of the exhibition Gaëtane Verna.
While this may be true literally - a single bead did not have trading or purchasing power in Venice - these objects were not considered 'trinkets' during production or later when they ceased to be used for international commerce.
In fact, the art of glass beads now holds UNESCO intangible heritage status after a campaign by a private committee formed to safeguard the practice.
The international body recognises the knowledge and mastery of glass and the specific tools and processes that were associated with production. Seed beads are now no longer in production, so Kiwanga acquired tens of thousands from a family producer’s stockpile dating from the 1930s. Close examination shows why the Venetian beads with their intense colours and diverse forms were so valuable.
Having titled the work ‘Trinket’, it would perhaps have been some clarification that seed beads are now expensive to buy given their finite availability.
Who were Venice's impiraresse?
The blue beaded exterior installation is titled Impiraresse (Blue), a reference to the women who undertook the painstaking task of threading beads onto strings. This was essential for transportation - just imagine dropping a box of loose beads and trying to gather them back up.
Despite using the name of these bead stringers, Kiwanga goes no further in explaining their key role or how the need to thread beads brought about economic opportunities for women.
When it came to getting the string of beads made, the team behind the project seemed not to have consulted any of the bead stringers left in Venice who still know the historic techniques.
“Various techniques were used, from the simple stringing techniques shared with beaders by Alessandro Moretti [from the Costantini Glass Beads studio in Venice] to weaving techniques used in Africa, to embroidery techniques from North America,” says Verna.
Bead stringing was an acquired skill using dedicated instruments including up to 50 needles spread out like a fan between the fingers to pick up the beads and a wooden tray called sessola.
“Using the word impiraresse without giving any context is a form of cultural appropriation,” says Marisa Convento, an artist who learnt the art of the Venetian bead stringers and now makes jewellery with the technique.
“If you display Venetian glass beads, as a minimum you give some history or mention they are UNESCO.”
Kiwanga’s work forms a delicate and mesmerising installation but one that omits essential parts of the story, undermining the valid point she is trying to make about exposing ‘overlooked’ histories.
