Don’t call them witches: Your guide to the séance photographers, psychic visionaries, and occultists of the Venice Biennale:
. © Tavia Ito / estate of Maya Deren. Deren's films are made available from Re:Voir video and Kino Lorber on DVD, Blu-Ray and VOD., filled with her drawings of chimeric, fanciful creatures—including a boy whose head becomes a house and other unexpected transformations—as a way to
entertain her children. The whimsical and otherworldly volume is also the namesake of the 59th edition of the Venice Biennale,“The Surrealist artist describes a magical world where life is constantly re-envisioned through the prism of the imagination. It is a world where everyone can change, be transformed, become something or someone else; a world set free, brimming with possibilities,” curator Cecilia Alemani wrote in a statement.
From these re-positionings emerge intriguing new art-historical connections. Particularly resonant in these works is the presence of the occult, witchcraft, psychic communications, Vodou practitioners, and other alternative ways of knowing. A striking number of artists on view are associated with Spiritism, the 19th-century movement associated with séances, automatic writing, and the emerging medium of photography, which offered an expressive outlet for women of the age.
met with a spiritual medium who revealed to her that she, too, had innate psychic abilities. Though Canavero knew nothing about the world of parapsychology, after the encounter, she began to experiment with a planchette, spelling out messages that were sent to her from the beyond. After several years, Canavero progressed into automatic drawings, composed of energetic, zigzagging lines and spirals. These drawings are on view at the Biennale in “The Milk of Dreams” in the Central Pavilion.
This reputation led her to psychologist Théodore Flournoy, who had written a book on Spiritism . Over the years, Flournoy conducted investigations into Smith’s trances and communications, ultimately publishing the book about her visions. Smith’s artworks sometimes relayed her impressions of civilizations on Mars, scenes from her past lives, and even her visions of Christ.
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