The international art event La Biennale di Venezia is taking place for the fifty-fifth time from June 1 through November 24, 2013. For this occasion, Germany has not only switched pavilions with France, but is also showing artworks that focus on themes of intercultural and intellectual transference. Susanne Gaensheimer, director of Frankfurt’s MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, has curated a selection of work for Germany’s pavilion in the building of the French pavilion by Chinese conceptual artist and regime critic Ai Weiwei, the German-French filmmaker Romuald Karmakar, the South African photographer Santu Mofokeng, and the Indian photographer Dayanita Singh. With the selection of these artists, Gaensheimer is continuing her transnational curatorial approach from 2011 that presented Germany as playing an active role in a complex, global structure that benefits from international exchange.

Gaensheimer states: “The artists that I invited and their work represent various themes that result from the convergence of diverse ideologies and ways of life that have a large impact on us today. It was important to me that all of them succeed in expanding our perspectives to include the points of view of the ‘other’—even in ways that may be uncomfortable.”