Artworks

ANGELS LISTENING: COLLATERAL EVENT OF THE 59TH INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION – LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA

For her presentation at the 59th Venice Biennale, Hovnanian presented Angels Listening (2022), an interactive exhibition featuring seven large-scale bronze angels staged around a silver confessional box, each figure rendered in silence with its mouth “taped” shut. Viewers were invited to participate by relinquishing their innermost thoughts, whether repressed due to fear of judgment or sheer inability, by writing them onto pieces of ribbon, placing these ribbons into La Scatola Catartica (The Cathartic Box), and ringing the awakening bell, a symbol of the role of the angels as mute listeners. At the end of each day all of the new messages were compiled onto prayer-like mats and dispersed throughout the exterior gardens for future visitors to encounter and share as a collective stream-of-consciousness. 

Through its integrated participatory process, Angels Listening offers viewers a chance to experience the liberation associated with catharsis and the sanctity of meditative environments in periods of shared isolation. Confronting the alienation of spiritual and communal experiences within the fabric of modern society due to political polarization and continuing technological advancement, both heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic, Hovnanian’s exhibition seamlessly identifies and soothes shared wounds that have most-often been suffered alone.

Angels Listening Installation, 2022