Last night’s Pizzalo Mundo pizza party was perhaps the most unorthodox of this season’s Venice Biennale events. The air smelled of za’atar and fig leaf oil, while conversations that may normally be siloed (the curator’s table, the collector’s corner, the artist’s after-party) collapsed into a single, flour-dusted swarm. This was cultural diplomacy by way of pizza dough.
The Occasion: Organized by curator Diana Campbell, entrepreneur Chomwan Weeraworawit, and Paris-based art advisors Samy Ghiyati and Nicolas Nahab, of the Paris-based art advisory NG Partners, Pizzalo Mundo was conceived as a solution to the overwhelming buzz of the week’s obligations, cutting through the scheduling demands with the simplest of solutions: a pizza oven.
The Entertainment: Each artist brought an ingredient from home—or simply one they loved. Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Penang coconut base arrived crowned with Precious Okoyomon’s flowers and Daria Kim’s wild honey. Tarek Atoui replaced tomato paste entirely with za’atar on hummus. Belgium Pavilion artist Miet Warlop brought artichoke hearts; Nordic Pavilion artist Tori Wrånes contributed self-grown potatoes pulled from Randesund soil. Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka finished a pizza with the unexpected combination of fig leaf oil and yuzu salt.
Food and Drink: The pizzas were the menu and the message—each one a small biography of the artist who contributed to it. The evening’s most quietly dramatic offering? A peculiar pizza built around Campbell’s pepper from Pohnpei, Micronesia (a place sometimes dubbed the Venice of the Pacific).
The Crowd: The packed crowd of art-world mainstays included museum curators and directors from institutions such as the Tate, Musée d’Orsay, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Dib Bangkok, Serralves, Pinault Collection, Wiels, MoMA, National Gallery Singapore, Hartwig Art Foundation, Centre Pompidou; artists Rirkrit Tiravanija, Miles Greenberg, Precious Okoyomon, Daria Kim, Tarek Atoui, Miet Warlop, Tori Wrånes, and Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka; and collectors Jenny Yeh, Nathalie and Jean-Daniel Cohen, Jacques Veyrat, Maria Bukhtoyarova, Alexandra and François Trausch, Germana Jaulin, Füsun Eczacıbaşı, Cherry Xu, Punn Chirakiti, and Terry Zucker.
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