By:  Elizabeth

A huge benefit of having an extended stay in Italy is we don’t feel the need to ‘fit it all in’ in a condensed period of time. It’s been wonderful to take the train in and spend the night in Venice, take in some of the many and varied offerings and then come back to our cozy and quiet apartment to recharge and gear up for another hit of stimulation from the plethora of of sights, sounds and smells that fill the Italian Riviera.

Several nights ago took us to a beautiful gothic building in Venice to listen to I Musici Veneziani where a vibrant chamber orchestra performed Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. The musicians where dressed in early 1700-period costumes to add to the festivities of the evening, which was truly enchanting. The next day we started out early to visit the infamously famous Venetian Art Festival — Biennale.

In case you’re not familiar with it— the Venice Biennale (La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice by the Biennale Foundation. It has been organized every year since 1895, and is the oldest of its kind. It was closed during World War I and II and also took a hiatus for covid. Biennale alternates every second year between art and architecture (hence the name Biennale). Besides art, there are many other events organized by the foundation during this time including theatre, music, and dance. The Venice Film Festival takes place at the Lido.

We started at the first venue with the biggest pavilion, the Giardini, set in a beautiful park and also where the international pavilions are located. Countries from all over the world feature their artists in these architecturally representative buildings. [The Russian Pavilion was dubiously closed this year] We then ventured to the second largest venue and the original site, Arsendale, had a delicious lunch, and viewed the show there. One of the most interesting things that stood out for me was how much of the art was audio visual with artists making and sharing stories, movies and photography. Many of the statements were about controversial social and political events. I guess there is nothing new here, just the art form artists are now using to get thoughts, ideas, expressions and opinions across. This year majority of the artists in this years exhibition are women and gender non-conforming. I highly recommend you reading the 2022 vision statement that I have photographed and included below to get a sense of the world view of artist and curators during these important times, and then enjoy the art!

In other news we’ve learned that it’s just not acceptable to live in Italy and have a last name that doesn’t have at least four vowels. Italians depend on vowels in all their words, so to make it easy on them we’ve changed our name to Gosselini. It makes it so much easier to make reservations!

Sidebar: Many of you have asked about the covid situation here in Italy. It’s difficult for us to judge as we aren’t really socializing with anyone. It is an enforced requirement for everyone to wear a mask while traveling on any type of public transportation. Because we have a car we minimize any bus travel. We’ve been eating outside whenever that’s available and it is available most of the time. Also, some establishments require you to wear a mask and we do see people wearing them in supermarkets, drug stores, hair and nail salons. We’ve tried to figure out what the Italian health department reports but . . . It’s all in Italian! So far, we’ve stayed healthy.

Ciao

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