At the edge of the wind

Away from the headlines and beyond the controversies, there comes a time for reflection, when art alone remains, inviting us “to listen to the enduring signals of the earth and of life, attuned to the frequencies of the soul.” It was a hope expressed by the late curator Koyo Kouoh – almost a spiritual testament – and an invitation that has become a call to “slow down and tune into the frequencies of minor keys.”
That thread can be sensed throughout the national pavilions, each embracing and interpreting it in its own way.
“Take a deep breath. Exhale. Relax your shoulders. Close your eyes,” Kouoh writes in the opening pages of the exhibition catalogue. It is an invitation to a multisensory, almost synesthetic experience – one that Finland interprets with remarkable sensitivity. The effect is immediate upon entering the wooden pavilion designed by Alvar Aalto in 1956. Resembling a small movable structure emerging from a Nordic forest, it now hosts the work of Jenna Sutela, an artist whose internationally acclaimed practice has been presented from New York to Rivoli, Geneva, London, Munich and Shanghai.
For Venice, Sutela has conceived the evocative Aeolian Suite.

Arranged in a circle like a compass rose, grey-silver sculptures covered in soft hairs and feathers tremble to the sounds of Nordic winds blowing from Helsinki. These winds converse across the lagoon with two local bore, the Scirocco and the Garbin, becoming the protagonists of an environmental drama in which the elements themselves perform. Their voices mingle with the sounds of rigging, washing lines and poplar leaves, weaving an intricate acoustic landscape of natural phenomena and everyday life.
Wooden wind instruments played by an orchestra of children – alto, bass and contrabass recorders – translate the improbable language of these inanimate sculptural figures into something akin to the playful grammelot of the Commedia dell’Arte: an Aeolian dialogue without human voices, listening instead to the climate and its transformations in what becomes a collective cry for help. These personifications of the atmospheric forces that sweep across Venice stand as powerful symbols of the fragility of the planet and of the ecological systems upon which all life depends.
Open microphones, left at the mercy of the wind, capture every unpredictable shift. Meteorological variables can be measured, analysed and processed through algorithms, yet the wind ultimately remains an elusive, incalculable force – one that continually resists complete understanding.