Switzerland

The Swiss Pavilion, as envisioned by Swiss-Brazilian artist Guerreiro do Divino Amor, plays with the national logic of celebratory self-representation through culture, which was at the very origin of the national pavilions at the Giardini della Biennale over a century ago. A passionate researcher, a curious documentarist with a baroque and dreamlike imagination, and an extraordinary world-builder, Guerreiro do Divino Amor invites us to laugh in a benevolent spirit at our chauvinism and at those clichés with which we represent the world and ourselves. The latter attitude seems to us of fundamental importance in a period of increasing polarisation of politics and radical oppositions such as the one we are currently experiencing.
Divided into two parts, the Miracle of Helvetia and Roma Talismano, the Super Superior Civilizations exhibition presents the sixth and seventh chapters of the monumental Superfictional World Atlas saga, which the artist has been working on for 20 years now. Allegorical in nature and potentially infinite in scope, his atlas takes aim – with sharp irony and apparent lightness – at crucial political issues, such as the handling of power and collective imagination by the media, the financial system, and religion.