Rirao is an independent entity formed by the meeting of Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro, but over time has since been reinvented as a new transnational space dominated by an Asian “other” due to an influx of Asian migrants. Singapore is a model for this island.
In constructing a national pavilion for Rirao, we are faced with the impossibility of the artist being able to adequately represent a divided nation like Rirao, which is a juxtaposition of several spaces.
Venice itself is a kind of heterotopia that is neither here nor there, a bejewelled garden and floating city which plays host to the artistic expressions of nations around the world. Political changes and the movements of the borders of nations across the world have been mirrored in the erection and nomadic movements of national pavilions.
What is the role of art, design and architecture in a time and space where cultures are mobile and our environments do not reflect our history, but are reduced to memorials and spectacles?
