Ed Atkins and Soham Gupta at the 58th Venice Biennale: Death, Despair, and Urban Marginality

The 58th Venice Biennale features works by Ed Atkins and Soham Gupta that confront themes of death, despair, and urban marginality. Atkins, born in Oxford in 1982, is presented as a successor to the Young British Artists, with references to the Chapman Brothers and Mat Collishaw. His video works depict hopelessness and endless cycles of falling and dying, accompanied by interminable closing credits, evoking Bosch and Dalí. Gupta, an Indian photographer born in 1988, documents the urban poor in the outskirts of Kolkata (Calikut) with unflinching empathy. His images show a blind beggar in a mortal embrace, a street girl displaying her new shawl like butterfly wings, and many desperate faces. Gupta's post-production techniques heighten the tension. The article criticizes the Biennale's curatorial choice to scatter Atkins's works across multiple pavilions, arguing that this dispersion hinders coherent reading and national identity. It notes the Biennale's success in attracting new nations but warns of overcrowding and the impossibility of seeing the entire exhibition in less than twenty days.